[FWTools] installing grass gis mapserver

[Frank Warmerdam]

Travis Kirstine wrote:
> I would like to install grass gis and mapserver on my machine running fedora
> core 6.  I'm worried that when I install grass / mapserver and configure
> gdal that it will "override" my FWTools gdal installation and I won't be
> able to read/write several formats (ECW, MrSid) unless I configure gdal with
> those libraries (which I don't want to do).  Is there a easy workaround so
> that configure gdal it is only used by mapserver / grass and I keep
> FWTools's precompiled libraries

Travis,

It should be easy to keep the FWTools suite completely distinct from stuff
that you build and install yourself on your machine.  FWTools is deliberately
setup to be isolated.

The smoothest way to handle this is to just add the FWTools/bin_safe directory
to your path, instead of sourcing the fwtools_env.sh script to setup all
the environment variables.  Also, when configuring things like MapServer
and GRASS you may need to ensure your own gdal-config script gets found,
not the one in FWTools.  In fact the easiest way to be sure of that is
to just delete the FWTools/bin_safe/gdal-config script - there is no
need for it normally.

As for which version of gdal utilities get used at the command line, that
will depend on the ordering of things in the PATH.  If you want to use
the FWTools gdal utilities instead of the ones you build yourself (since
they include extra formats) then you can just add the FWTools bin_safe
at the beginning of your path.

BTW, the utilities in FWTools/bin_safe are actually just scripts that
setup LD_LIBRARY_PATH, PATH and various other things to use the FWTools
versions of files, libraries and programs before invoking the program.
This is how FWTools achieves "isolation" - by never having to globally
set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point at FWTools.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org