[OSGeo-Discuss] Request for a new project: GIS for Enterprise Linux

Thu Jun 3 00:09:49 PDT 2010

Hello Mathieu:

I see no-one from OSGeo has responded yet (not on the list, anyway) so 
I'll chime in with a few quick comments.
First - Your initiative is IMHO very positive, worthwhile even long 
overdue. I am sure a repo of CentOSGIS with a consistant set of packages 
will be well accepted and widely used.
Second - Having said that, most users will probably wait till CentOS 6.x ...
Third - I'm am not a representative of OSGeo, but as far as I know, none 
of the OSGeo projects are "distro specific", so I don't know if they 
will accept allocating resources for this program. Wiki and maillist 
maybe yes, but I don't see it as an OSGeo project with the usual 
incubation->acceptance procedure.

Best Regards,
Micha

On 01/06/2010 12:52, Mathieu Baudier wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we would like to set up a new project within the OSGeo Foundation
> whose purpose would be to coordinate efforts around the packaging and
> usage of GIS software on Enterprise Linux (EL), that is, Red Hat
> Enterprise Linux and its community derivatives such as CentOS and
> Scientific Linux.
>
> We already had some discussions on the Live CD mailing-list and it was
> recommended that we submit our proposal on this Discuss mailing-list.
>
> I already described in great details on the Live CD mailing-list the
> rationale and approach for such a project:
> http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/live-demo/2010-May/001724.html
>
> It boils down to:
> - EL is a popular and robust platform for servers and computing-heavy
> workstations, and is therefore a good fit for the specific
> requirements of GIS
>
> - stability and predictability is very important for EL users, but the
> FLOSS GIS field is evolving fast, so a flexible approach will be
> provided so that users can chose how to balance between stability and
> the latest features
>
> - a strong focus will be on integrating with and contributing to
> existing efforts, namely:
>    - the EPEL repository already provides quite a few GIS packages and
> we will of course help maintaining them rather than maintain our own
> packages (I was told by one of their main maintainers that such help
> would be welcomed, this also implies coordination with the Fedora GIS
> group)
>    - the Debian GIS project maintains a lot of GIS packages and is the
> basis for the Ubuntu GIS effort: we will try to be consistent with the
> versions they maintain and aim at interoperability between these
> platforms
>    - a lot can also probably be reused from the GIS LiveCD project
> (hence the initial discussion on their list)
>
> - we will also maintain an RPM repository for packages that cannot be
> maintained in EPEL: e.g. because they require to update the base
> system, or because we want to maintain many versions in parallel
> (PostGIS 1.3/1.4/1.5 is an example)
>
> During the last few months we successfully went through a proof of
> concept, packaging and maintaining recent versions of some GIS
> software on CentOS 5 (mainly PostGIS, QGIS, GRASS and their
> dependencies):
> http://www.argeo.org/linux/argeo-el/5/
> (see at the end of the mail for details)
>
> The initial spec files were contributed by another member of the
> CentOS community and a few other people tested some of the packages.
>
> Spec files and patches are versioned here:
> https://www.argeo.org/svn/dependencies/trunk/org.argeo.dep.rpm/centos
> and the builds are automated within a mock environment (build
> dependencies installed from scratch in a rooted environment for each
> new package build)
>
> Having this effort under the aegis of the OSGeo foundation would allow
> to widely communicate on it and interest more users.
>
> What we would need in order to set up the project is:
> - a formal approval from OSGeo (it is not clear to me whether
> additional steps are needed)
> - a dedicated Wiki page, describing the project, listing existing
> efforts, gathering howtos, pointing to the specific RPM repo
> - a dedicated mailing-list (as suggested in previous discussions)
>
> In the short term, we (argeo.org) can continue to host the RPM
> repository, the build process and the versioning of the spec files and
> patches. In the future it may make sense to have the RPMs hosted by
> osgeo.org or a standard FLOSS hosting (sourceforge or google code).
>
> Please tell me if you need more details.
> Your feedback is of course welcome as well as indications on how to
> proceed with the next steps.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mathieu
>
> # EL GIS packaging proof of concept, current status
>
> For the time being, only the latest versions have been rebuilt for EL 5.5:
> http://www.argeo.org/linux/argeo-el/5/
>
> Others are still available in the 5.4 repos:
> http://www.argeo.org/linux/argeo-el/5.4/
>
> (support for PostgreSQL 8.4 was introduced in EL 5.5, which implies
> that PostGIS 1.4 and 1.5 moved from the GIS Plus repo to the GIS repo)
>
> * Requiring no changes in the base distribution (depends on EPEL)
> http://www.argeo.org/linux/argeo-el/5/gis/SRPMS/
> - gdal (1.6.3)
> - geos (3.2.2)
> - grass (6.2.3 and 6.4.0RC6)
> - mapserver (5.6.3)
> - postgis (1.3.6)
> - proj (4.7.0)
>
> * Requiring changes in the base distribution (depends on EPEL,
> PostgresqlRPM (in 5.4) and Argeo Plus (for Qt4))
> http://www.argeo.org/linux/argeo-el/5/gis-plus/SRPMS/
> - qgis (1.0.2 and 1.4.0)
> - postgis (1.4.1 and 1.5.1)
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>    

-- 
Micha Silver
http://www.surfaces.co.il/
Arava Development Co.  +972-52-3665918