OSGeo Binary Distribution

This is a proposal for a project to develop an OSGeo "branded and certified" binary distribution of open source geospatial software for Windows, Linux and possibly MacOS X and Solaris.

Objectives

Offer a painless user experience installing and getting started with OSGeo products.

• Support major operating systems. In order of precidence that likely means Windows, Linux (Intel32), MacOS X and Solaris (Sparc).
• Ensure that all components are inter-compatible avoiding version incompatibility hell.
• Allow progressive installation, with packages pulled over the internet as requested. So the person can install a few packages without having to download everything, and so they can go back and add more packages later.
• Provide an easy to use GUI installer.
• Be relatively distribution/version agnostic - on linux we hope the same binaries will work on Debian, Fedora Core, Suse, Ubuntu, etc. On windows and MacOS X we hope the binaries would work across a variety of relatively recent OS versions.
• Include at least all the OSGeo project software as packages, and dependencies of those packages.
• Suitable for desktop and web service folks.

Funding

• Budget 2006-2007
• EDRC BAA Proposal
• Make this a proper "project" of the foundation so folks can earmark specific sponsorship support to it.

Technical Notes

• It would make sense to review/target those who are already creating Live Boot disc distributions or consolidated packages, so we can build on top of their successes. (ie. ominiverdi)
• I think building on the existing FGS infrastructure Linux (and possibly other Unix platforms) is attractive.
• I think the existing MS4W package could potentially be a base for windows distribution.
• William Kyngesburye has done a great deal of work producing MacOS X framework-style packages of GDAL, MapServer, GRASS etc for MacOS X ( http://www.kyngchaos.com/ ).
• GDF Hannover has build RPMs for various Linux distros: http://www.gdf-hannover.de/software This could be a starting point
• Osaka City University has built RPMs for Mandriva Linux distros: http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/foss4g/downloads This could be a starting point too
• Stephan Holl/GDF has written a GUI installer for QGIS0.8 with winGRASS-native integrated (MS-Windows).
• DebianGIS is about improving Debian to make it the best distribution for Geographical Information Systems applications and users. A good deal of GIS related softwares and libraries (e.g. GRASS) are already present in Debian. We have currently an up-to-date GRASS package in main and many other packages.
• UbuntuGIS is a wiki page that collects informations about all the GIS packages users find in a standard Ubuntu installation

References

• Binary Package Listing - an attempt to make a single page pointing to all the currently available binary packages for each project