Intro

Note If you find any errors in this document please feel free to change it or email your corrections to tim [at] linfiniti.com

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS lets you browse and create map data on your computer. It supports many common spatial data formats (e.g. ESRI ShapeFile, geotiff). QGIS supports plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost (download here).

These notes are for if you want to build QGIS from source. One of the major aims here is to show how this can be done using binary packages for all dependencies - building only the core QGIS stuff from source. Currently the gdal grass raster driver needs to be built from source too - Ill revise these notes when a suitable package is available. I prefer this approach because it means we can leave the business of managing system packages to apt and only concern ourselves with coding QGIS! Note this document is still under construction...and is continually evolving.

For people interested in obtaining binaries of QGIS try:

sudo apt-get install qgis

Or visit the QGIS website for downloads of more bleeding edge versions.

Version Specific Documentation

Since version 0.8 aka 'Titan' includes a complete overhaul / port to the Qt4 libraries, the installation procedure is somewhat different so I have refactored this document into two separate parts:

• Building Quantum GIS from source (current version) : http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/BuildingFromSource for up to date notes

• BuildingQuantumGisPoint7FromSource - For those building 0.7.x versions (which depend on Qt3)

• BuildingQuantumGisPoint8FromSource - For those building 0.8.x versions (which depend on Qt4)