postgis extension cannot be made without raster

[mwtoews]

When building the postgres extensions (for PostgreSQL 9.1+) with ./configure --without-raster, the postgis extension build fails.

There are many references to "raster" and "rtpostgis" in extensions/postgis/Makefile.in, so this is an expected consequence.

Interestingly, if --with-topology is configured, the topology extension can be successfully built and installed in /usr/share/postgresql/9.1/extension/. However, from psql:

postgres=# CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;
ERROR:  required extension "postgis" is not installed

There should really be a separate postgis_raster extension built, if configured with raster support. (I'm not sure if it is too late for 2.0.0, but I'll assume it is.)

[robe]

Believe it or not, we had long painful discussions about this and in the end decided that we want raster to be part of the core postgis extension, so building the postgis extension requires you build with raster and if you don't want that you have to do it the old way without extensions.

 http://www.postgis.org/pipermail/postgis-devel/2012-January/thread.html#17158

topology is separate because well it is installed in a separate schema and limitations of extensions don't allow extensions to go across schemas.

The main reason for this is it makes install easier for those who want both raster and vector functionality. The only reason against it is it adds a dependency on gdal.

In future releases of postgis, the gdal dependency may not be just limited to raster though so keep that in mind. gdal brings in a whole wealth of opportunities -- e.g the possibility of spatial foreign data wrappers that piggy back on postgis geometry. Closer integration with our loaders etc. Besides half the postgis dev team works on gdla anyway (you might become victim of the borg too Mike :) )

[mwtoews]

Ah thanks, that clears things up a bit. I've been looking at cleaning up a few docs on the 9.1+ Extensions, so that helps put it in perspective.