[Qgis-user] Help for a Newbie with QGIS and GDAL

[William Kyngesburye]

This is the general problem I recently emailed the dev list about - that on OSX the shell PATH (and any other environment variable) is not known to applications.

Ideally, for Mac users, a plugin should provide a configuration option to locate needed external programs.  There is a hidden OSX configuration file that allows you to add environment variables that applications can see, but it's hidden and requires knowledge of the plist file structure (or the Xcode Developer Tools).

I don't recommend it as a long-term solution, but the file is

~/.MacOSX/environment.plist

On Apr 23, 2010, at 4:12 PM, John C. Tull wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
> On Apr 23, 2010, at 11:31 AM, Michael Kimmerly wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I am a new user to both QGIS and GDAL although I have used QGIS casually for about a year. Recently I have been working with it much more intensely, trying to develop some working routines for doing precision agriculture with QGIS as my primary tool.
>> 
>> I currently have QGIS 1.5 installed. I preferably use a Mac computer - OSX 10.6.3 Snow Leopard although I do have access to Windows computer as well.
>> 
>> My following comments will address my usage on the Mac computer only as that is where I would prefer to find a solution.
>> 
>> I have been attempting to install and run the GDAL Tools for access to the routines such as raster clipper and contour. 
>> 
>> My problem appears to be with the GDAL installation. Whenever I attempt a GDAL procedure, I get the error message 
>> 
>> "The process failed to start. Either the invoked program is missing, or you may have insufficient permissions to invoke the program."
>> 
>> I believe I have traced this to be some issue with the bindings of GDAL and Python. However, I have not been able to find any solution that seems to address this or that I can understand. I have just yesterday methodically un-installed and re-installed all of the frameworks as described on Kyngchaos.com necessary for operation of QGIS with GRASS support. I have the native (for Mac) Python 2.6.1 installed and I have also installed the most recent Python 2.6.5. GDAL installed is 1.7.1.
>> 
>> If there are any Mac GDAL/QGIS users out there who can help, I would certainly appreciate it.
> 
> If you open the Terminal, what happens when you type:
> which gdalinfo
> ?
> 
> If a path to the binary is not shown, then you need to make sure that the gdal framework is set. You should see:
> /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/unix/bin/gdalinfo
> 
> If you do see the binary, then it must be something with the experimental build that you are using. For setting paths, here is an explanation from online documentation for the django project:
> 
> After installing the binary packages, you'll want to add the following to your .profile to be able to run the package programs from the command-line:
> 
> export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/UnixImageIO.framework/Programs:$PATH
> export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/PROJ.framework/Programs:$PATH
> export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/GEOS.framework/Programs:$PATH
> export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/SQLite3.framework/Programs:$PATH
> export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Programs:$PATH
> export PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/bin:$PATH

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

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