[Live-demo] Re: GIS RPMs for Enterprise Linux (RHEL/CentOS/ScientificLinux)

[Alex Mandel]

I don't remember who maintains it but:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Application:/Geo/
has rpms for a lot of stuff, and while it's hosted on suse the rpms are
for most of the major rpm based distros.

There is also a company I think in Europe who's been building a suse
based geo live disc for their own purposes.

Guess I should go find those links.

Thanks,
Alex

Cameron Shorter wrote:
> Hello Mathieu,
> Tyler, thanks for the introduction.
> 
> As Tyler mentioned, the OSGeo Live DVD project builds a LiveDVD based
> upon an Xubuntu system.
> Of value to you, is that project leads have written, and continue to
> maintain, bash install scripts for ~ 35 GIS packages, which should make
> it much easier to build RPMs.
> 
> Details about the project are at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc
> I suggest following links to our build process, list of projects and
> contacts, and our svn.
> 
> At the moment, I'm writing up the OSGeo marketing pipeline, and defining
> what is required from Geospatial projects to help OSGeo promote them.
> Once your RPM project kicks off, I suggest adding your details in here.
> 
> Of particular note:
> * We wish to make it as easy as possible for projects to contribute to
> marketing/packaging efforts as possible. So any sharing we can do
> between packaging efforts would be great. (Eg, lets share Definition
> files, documentation files, examples etc)
> 
> 
> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
>> Hello Mathieu,
>> Thank you for writing!  Indeed if it can be coordianted through OSGeo,
>> I think it would be highly successful.  I think the place it is being
>> discussed the most is through our live dvd creation (ubuntu based)
>> project.  I'm cc'ing Alex and Cameron to get their thoughts on whether
>> the livedvd project is where it should be discussed or not.
>>
>> Aside from that, I think many people on our main "discuss" mailing
>> list would be very interested.  There may have been some movement on
>> the topic already and your note might help bring them all together.
>>
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>> I can help support you by creating a mailing list when needed (if
>> enough people on discuss are interested) and by helping connect you to
>> specific people I know might care.
>>
>> Personally, having packages ready for RHEL is critical for further
>> enterprise penetration, so will help in guiding you as best I can.
>>
>> Tyler
>>
>> On 05/01/2010 05:17 AM, Mathieu Baudier wrote:
>>> (I found your mail on the OSGeo contact page, this message was to long
>>> to be sent via the form)
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> it has been a few months that we are working on packaging the latest
>>> stable versions of some useful GIS libraries and software for CentOS 5
>>> (see below for details).
>>>
>>> The goal is to have a solid but up to date GIS stack for the desktop
>>> as well as the server under RHEL/CentOS/ScientificLinux (we tested
>>> only CentOS so far).
>>>
>>> Most of the effort consisted in rebuilding/repackaging recent Fedora
>>> SRPMs, some being more difficult than others because of the older
>>> libraries included in RHEL 5.
>>> We looked closely at the Debian GIS project (and the related Ubuntu
>>> GIS project) and are more or less tracking their versions. One goal is
>>> to be able to switch quickly from one distribution to the other while
>>> using the same GIS software stack.
>>> We already had some informal contacts with community members who
>>> contributed RPM spec files.
>>>
>>> After having tested the approach for a few months and with RHEL 6
>>> around the corner (the beta is already available), we would like to
>>> see how to contribute this effort to the community and make it
>>> something more public and shared (and thus more useful for everybody).
>>>
>>> In http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Binary_Distribution you say that
>>> there is currently no centralized effort in the RPM community.
>>>
>>> Our idea would to focus on Enterprise Linux derivatives and to
>>> centralize knowledge and approaches (not just provide RPMs).
>>> In addition we could maintain and provide a set of RPMs when needed,
>>> based on what we have done already.
>>>
>>> There are already efforts going on in this field and we want to
>>> synchronize with them, not duplicate what they are doing:
>>> - a Fedora SIG: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GIS
>>> - the EPEL repository: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL
>>> - PostgreSQL for Enterprise Linux: http://yum.pgrpms.org/
>>>
>>> The problem with the EPEL is that they cannot include software which
>>> requires to upgrade the base system.
>>> For those packages who don't require upgrades of the core, the best
>>> solution would be to maintain up to date versions there (we already
>>> had contacts with EPEL maintainers).
>>> But sometime more flexibility is needed, e.g. for PostGIS, people
>>> sometimes don't want to upgrade from 1.3 to 1.5 because of language
>>> changes, even if if woudl be possible.
>>>
>>> OSGeo seems the best place to centralize this effort, would you be
>>> interested?
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Mathieu Baudier
>>>
>>> * 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 (3.2.0)
>>> - grass (6.2.3 and 6.4.0RC6)
>>> - mapserver (5.6.0)
>>> - postgis (1.3.6)
>>> - proj (4.7.0)
>>>
>>> * Requiring changes in the base distribution (depends on EPEL,
>>> PostgresqlRPM and Argeo Plus)
>>> 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)
>>
> 
>