Chapter 2. PostGIS Installation

Retrieve the PostGIS source archive from the downloads website https://postgis.net/stuff/postgis-3.7.0dev.tar.gz

wget https://postgis.net/stuff/postgis-3.7.0dev.tar.gz
tar -xvzf postgis-3.7.0dev.tar.gz
cd postgis-3.7.0dev

This will create a directory called postgis-3.7.0dev in the current working directory.

Alternatively, checkout the source from the git repository https://git.osgeo.org/gitea/postgis/postgis/ .

git clone https://git.osgeo.org/gitea/postgis/postgis.git postgis
cd postgis
sh autogen.sh
    

Change into the newly created postgis directory to continue the installation.

./configure

PostGIS has the following requirements for building and usage:

Required

Optional

As with most linux installations, the first step is to generate the Makefile that will be used to build the source code. This is done by running the shell script

./configure

With no additional parameters, this command will attempt to automatically locate the required components and libraries needed to build the PostGIS source code on your system. Although this is the most common usage of ./configure, the script accepts several parameters for those who have the required libraries and programs in non-standard locations.

The following list shows only the most commonly used parameters. For a complete list, use the --help or --help=short parameters.

	If you obtained PostGIS from the code repository , the first step is really to run the script ./autogen.sh This script will generate the configure script that in turn is used to customize the installation of PostGIS. If you instead obtained PostGIS as a tarball, running ./autogen.sh is not necessary as configure has already been generated.

Once the Makefile has been generated, building PostGIS is as simple as running

make

The last line of the output should be "PostGIS was built successfully. Ready to install."

All the functions have comments generated from the documentation. If you wish to install these comments into your spatial databases later, run the command which requires docbook. The postgis_comments.sql and other package comment files are also packaged in the tar.gz distribution in the doc folder so no need to make comments if installing from the tar ball. Comments are also included as part of the CREATE EXTENSION install.

make comments

The make cheatsheets target generates html cheat sheets suitable for quick reference or for student handouts. This requires xsltproc to build and will generate 4 files in doc folder topology_cheatsheet.html, raster_cheatsheet.html, postgis_cheatsheet.html

You can download some pre-built ones available in html and pdf from PostGIS / PostgreSQL Study Guides

make cheatsheets

The PostGIS extensions are built and installed automatically when PostgreSQL extension support is available.

If you are building from source repository, you need to build the function descriptions first. These get built if you have docbook installed. You can also manually build with the statement:

make comments

Building the comments is not necessary if you are building from a release tar ball since these are packaged pre-built with the tar ball already.

The extensions should automatically build as part of the make install process. You can if needed build from the extensions folders or copy files if you need them on a different server.

cd extensions
cd postgis
make clean
make
export PGUSER=postgres #overwrite psql variables
make check #to test before install
make install
# to test extensions
make check RUNTESTFLAGS=--extension

	make check uses psql to run tests and as such can use psql environment variables. Common ones useful to override are PGUSER,PGPORT, and PGHOST. Refer to psql environment variables

The extension files will always be the same for the same version of PostGIS and PostgreSQL regardless of OS, so it is fine to copy over the extension files from one OS to another as long as you have the PostGIS binaries already installed on your servers.

If you want to install the extensions manually on a separate server different from your development, You need to copy the following files from the extensions folder into the PostgreSQL / share / extension folder of your PostgreSQL install as well as the needed binaries for regular PostGIS if you don't have them already on the server.

Once you do that, you should see postgis, postgis_topology as available extensions in PgAdmin -> extensions.

If you are using psql, you can verify that the extensions are installed by running this query:

SELECT name, default_version, installed_version
FROM pg_available_extensions WHERE name LIKE 'postgis%';

             name             | default_version | installed_version
------------------------------+-----------------+-------------------
 postgis                      | 3.7.0dev         | 3.7.0dev
 postgis_raster               | 3.7.0dev         | 3.7.0dev
 postgis_sfcgal               | 3.7.0dev         |
 postgis_topology             | 3.7.0dev         |
(6 rows)

If you have the extension installed in the database you are querying, you'll see mention in the installed_version column. If you get no records back, it means you don't have postgis extensions installed on the server at all. PgAdmin III 1.14+ will also provide this information in the extensions section of the database browser tree and will even allow upgrade or uninstall by right-clicking.

If you have the extensions available, you can install postgis extension in your database of choice by either using pgAdmin extension interface or running these sql commands:

CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_raster;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_sfcgal;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;

In psql you can use to see what versions you have installed and also what schema they are installed.

\connect mygisdb
\x
\dx postgis*

List of installed extensions
-[ RECORD 1 ]-------------------------------------------------
Name        | postgis
Version     | 3.7.0dev
Schema      | public
Description | PostGIS geometry, geography, and raster spat..
-[ RECORD 2 ]-------------------------------------------------
Name        | postgis_raster
Version     | 3.0.0dev
Schema      | public
Description | PostGIS raster types and functions
-[ RECORD 3 ]-------------------------------------------------
Name        | postgis_topology
Version     | 3.7.0dev
Schema      | topology
Description | PostGIS topology spatial types and functions

Extension tables spatial_ref_sys, layer, topology can not be explicitly backed up. They can only be backed up when the respective postgis or postgis_topology extension is backed up, which only happens when you back up the whole database. Only srid records not packaged with PostGIS are captured in backups, so don't change the entries we ship and expect the modifications to persist. Put in a ticket if you find an issue. The structures of extension tables are never backed up since they are created with CREATE EXTENSION and assumed to be the same for a given version of an extension. These behaviors are built into the current PostgreSQL extension model.

If you installed 3.7.0dev, without using our wonderful extension system, you can change it to be extension based by running the below commands to package the functions in their respective extension. Installing using `unpackaged` was removed in PostgreSQL 13, so you are advised to switch to an extension build before upgrading to PostgreSQL 13.

CREATE EXTENSION postgis FROM unpackaged;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_raster FROM unpackaged;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology FROM unpackaged;

If you wish to test the PostGIS build, run

make check

The above command will run through various checks and regression tests using the generated library against an actual PostgreSQL database.

	If you configured PostGIS using non-standard PostgreSQL, GEOS, or Proj locations, you may need to add their library locations to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

	Currently, the make check relies on the PATH and PGPORT environment variables when performing the checks - it does not use the PostgreSQL version that may have been specified using the configuration parameter --with-pgconfig. So make sure to modify your PATH to match the detected PostgreSQL installation during configuration or be prepared to deal with the impending headaches.

Sandboxed build accounts that are not PostgreSQL superusers can delegate database ownership during the regression cycle by exporting POSTGIS_REGRESS_DB_OWNER. The harness will create the temporary regression database owned by the nominated role while continuing to connect using the less privileged account. Combine this with POSTGIS_REGRESS_ROLE_EXT_CREATOR when the extension creation role must differ from the database owner. These variables allow automated environments to exercise the full upgrade and extension install paths without promoting the calling account to superuser, provided the target PostgreSQL instance permits extension installation by those delegate roles.

If successful, make check will produce the output of almost 500 tests. The results will look similar to the following (numerous lines omitted below):

     CUnit - A unit testing framework for C - Version 2.1-3
     http://cunit.sourceforge.net/

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Run Summary:    Type  Total    Ran Passed Failed Inactive
              suites     44     44    n/a      0        0
               tests    300    300    300      0        0
             asserts   4215   4215   4215      0      n/a
Elapsed time =    0.229 seconds

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Running tests

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Run tests: 134
Failed: 0


-- if you build with SFCGAL

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Running tests

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Run tests: 13
Failed: 0

-- if you built with raster support

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Run Summary:    Type  Total    Ran Passed Failed Inactive
              suites     12     12    n/a      0        0
               tests     65     65     65      0        0
             asserts  45896  45896  45896      0      n/a


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Running tests

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Run tests: 101
Failed: 0

-- topology regress

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Running tests

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Run tests: 51
Failed: 0

-- if you built --with-gui, you should see this too

     CUnit - A unit testing framework for C - Version 2.1-2
     http://cunit.sourceforge.net/

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Run Summary:    Type  Total    Ran Passed Failed Inactive
              suites      2      2    n/a      0        0
               tests      4      4      4      0        0
             asserts      4      4      4      0      n/a

output should look like:

============== dropping database "contrib_regression" ==============
DROP DATABASE
============== creating database "contrib_regression" ==============
CREATE DATABASE
ALTER DATABASE
============== installing fuzzystrmatch               ==============
CREATE EXTENSION
============== installing postgis                     ==============
CREATE EXTENSION
============== running regression test queries        ==============
test test-normalize_address   ... ok

=====================
All 2 tests passed.
=====================

To install PostGIS, type

make install

This will copy the PostGIS installation files into their appropriate subdirectory specified by the --prefix configuration parameter. In particular:

If you previously ran the make comments command to generate the postgis_comments.sql, raster_comments.sql file, install the sql file by running

make comments-install

	postgis_comments.sql, raster_comments.sql, topology_comments.sql was separated from the typical build and installation targets since with it comes the extra dependency of xsltproc.