[GRASSLIST:2490] Re: (no subject)

[Glynn Clements]

Steve Sherman wrote:

> I am new to both Linux and GRASS. I am attempting to set up a system 
> from scratch (still waiting on some components) that will be able to 
> handle my GIS needs. I have what I am sure are some dumb questions, but 
> they require an answer nonetheless.
> 
> 1. I am planning on setting up my system with Red Hat Linux 9.0. Will 
> GRASS run under this version of Red Hat?

Yes.

> 2. Will GRASS run under other Linux versions like SuSE 9.0 (which I am 
> also considering using)?

Yes. It runs on a wide variety of Unix and Unix-like systems,
including MacOSX and Cygwin. In short, anything that is basically
Unix-ish can run GRASS.

Having said that, GRASS consists of around 400 individual programs. If
you install a pre-compiled binary package on a version of Linux other
than the one on which it was built, a small number of those programs
may not run due to incompatible library versions.

OTOH, it should be possible to build all of those programs from the
GRASS source code on any Linux system. FWIW, I build regularly on
RedHat 6.2, many people build it on more recent versions such as
RedHat 9, SuSE 9 and unstable Debian releases, so it should build on
anything.

> 3. Will GRASS work with MySQL or is it restricted to PostgreSQL? And 
> will I have to become an expert programmer to integrate them?

For the 5.0.x (stable) and 5.3 (development) versions, a small number
of programs make use of PostgreSQL. This represents non-essential
functionality; primarily, the ability to store category labels in an
SQL database. GRASS' core functionality doesn't make any use of SQL
databases.

OTOH, the 5.7 (experimental) versions make extensive use of SQL
databases for storing vector data. However, those versions can use
either PostgreSQL or MySQL (or DBF files).

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>