Distribution Special Interest Groups

This page proposes to create and promote a group of interest for GeoFOSS packaging related issues.

Distribution development, quality assurance and maintenance are often not addressed by application developers, despite distributions being a very effective way for projects to woe wider audiences and hence sponsors.

The key goals of this project are:
 * Facilitate the integration of quality, stable, GeoFOSS packages into Software Distributions.
 * Develop "Live CDs" for new users to trial GeoFOSS.
 * Develop baseline GeoFOSS to be used as a basis for workshops, tutorials and presentations.

To achieve these goals, we will:
 * Define and simplify the process for incorporating GeoFOSS packages into software distribution.
 * Open channels of communication between packagers and application developers.
 * Providing tools to facilitate GeoFOSS packaging.

= Windows distributions =

OSGeo4W
OSGeo4W is a windows based stack of GeoFOSS which is based upon cygwin.

Goal: Ease of installation of the whole GeoFOSS stack in windows.

Status: Aug '08: Actively maintained by community, Works well


 * Pros:
 * Has already packaged many of the key GeoFOSS applications.
 * Likely to release first major release at FOSS4G 2008, 29 Sep 2008.
 * Has strong developer community.


 * Con
 * Needs installation
 * Needs internet connection for installation

PortableGIS
PortableGIS is a collection of GeoFOSS applications that run from a USB stick.

Goal: Have the most important applications always with you.

Status: Actively maintained by one person, (Jo Cook)


 * Pro
 * No installation required, just run the applications


 * Con
 * Doesn't work right from CD at the moment
 * Applications need clean-up (Eg. Java is bundled more than once)
 * Only one maintainer
 * Project development infrastructure not set up yet.
 * Would benefit by alignment with similar projects.
 * PortableGIS currently needs to be run from a writable medium (like and USB stick), it won't work on a read-only medium like a CD.

= Linux =

Unlike the Debian-GIS SIG, which already has mailing list / code repository infrastructure, the RPM-using community does not have such infrastructure and would benefit from hosting by OSGeo.

Debian Linux

 * Debian

Ubuntu Linux

 * Ubuntu

GeoLivre Linux

 * Geolivre Linux

Gentoo Linux

 * Gentoo

Mandriva Linux

 * Mandriva (not really a team but all relevant RPMs there and maintained)
 * Mandriva 2008 RPM (Osaka City University)
 * Mandriva CD ISO Image -- maintained by Osaka City University FOSS4G Team

RPM-based distributions, such as Fedora Linux and SuSE Linux, do not have a dedicated GIS teams, but there are several parties maintaining independent RPM archives that could be persuaded to band their efforts together under the aegis of the foundation:

Fedora Linux

 * Fedora Extra 6 (source RPMS and i386 binaries RPMS) contains a few GIS packages like GDAL, geos and proj
 * Fedora 7 (source RPMs and i386 binaries RPMs) contains a few GIS packages like GDAL, geos, proj and mapserver
 * Mapping Hacks Fedora RPMs -- maintained by SchuylerErle
 * intevation.de Fedora RPMs
 * PostGIS RPMs for Fedora from Refractions Research
 * Mandriva and SuSe RPMs -- maintained by GDF Hannover