OSGeo4W

Introduction

This page discusses a possible OSGeo Binary Distribution and Installer of software for MS Windows (aka Win32). It is a specific case of the OSGeo Binary Distribution which we hope might get going soon.

Goals

General goals:

• Include a wide variety of OSGeo packages.
• Painless installation
• Select desired packages only, and pull in dependencies automatically.

General Plan

Morph MS4W to use a nicer installer front end (instead of just zip files) and to include more packages.

Targetted Packages

In the following context required means we firmly plan to include this item, and that existing participants are committed to it. Optional implies we are interested in including it, but no one is committed to doing it. All packages will be optional to install (pending dependencies).

• MapServer (required, Jeff)
  • MapServer CGI (required, Jeff)
  • PHP MapScript (required, Jeff)
  • Python MapScript (optional)
• GDAL (required, Mateusz)
  • Python bindings (optional)
  • Plugin Drivers: ECW, OCI, SDE, MrSID, etc (optional)
• Mapbender (optional)
• Mapbuilder (optonal)
• GRASS (required) (Moritz Lennert?)
• Postgis/Postgres

Participants

• Jeff McKenna: MS4W Maintainer
• Frank Warmerdam: FWTools
• Mateusz Loskot: maintain GDAL related components
• Yewondwossen Assefa: MapServer core

Technical Notes

• existing MS4W Nullsoft installer script
• Paul Ramsey notes that for installation in corporate environments it can be very helpful to provide MSI files, and to support non-interactive distribution.
• Markus Neteler mentioned that 6.3.0 winGRASS is now in RC1 (download) and also included in QGIS 0.9.0

Package Requirements

MS4W

• Apache
  • install into any directory
  • allow user to specify port to use
• MapServer
  • SDE, Oracle plugins
  • Mapscript: PHP, Java, Python, C#
  • AGG
• Miscellaneous
  • automatically upgrade/install packages directly from the maptools.org server

Note: IIS requirement might be handled with a community wiki

==== WINGRASS ====

• ActiveState Tcl
• MSYS (commandline-ready)

Meeting Notes

- upgrades

• force a new download

- package

* package-by-package install is required 

• php can be used for cutom scripting

Mailing list invite

• Mark Cave-Ayland *
• Moritz Lennert *
• Tim Sutton (QGIS *)
• Frank
• Jeff
• Assefa
• Howard Butler
• Paul Ramsey
• Chris Holmes
• MapGuide
• GeoNetwork
• gvSIG
• GEOS
• OpenLayers

Build Environment

• MSVC 7.1 (MS4W, FWTools)
• possibly time to upgrade to 2005 (free version available)
• MSYS?
• Windows VM on telascience ??
• segment from massive buildkit
• include build library files (not source files)
  • offer as developer compenents??

Name of Installer

• OSGeo4W

Versions

• pick our nominal version of PHP, Python, etc.

Priorities

• packaging
• mailing list setup
• put into OSGeo svn
• sponsors from organizations

Timelime

• base structure by April 2008