GRASS GIS

Version: 6.4.0svn r36506 (as of Mar 2009)

User Notes

• A desktop raster/vector GIS system (command line and graphical user interface)
• Main site: ​http://grass.osgeo.org/
• Current packaging should be considered a preliminary proof-of-concept.
• The default interface is the Tcl/Tk GUI GIS manager. Both a plain text curses DOS box command prompt, and a shiny new wxPython GUI interface are also available.
• First time users should explore the ​first steps tutorial after installing.

Installation

• Get the ​OSGeo4W Installer. (400k network-installer, full download is approx 60-80mb)
  • Generic installer help can be found on the main OSGeo4W wiki page.
• For the moment GRASS is available in the "advanced" install. After a period of testing it may be moved to the "express" section. All other required packages are auto-selected during the installation.

Usage

The application can be run through:

• a desktop shortcut (icon)
• a menu shortcut
• its executable osgeo4w\apps\grass-6.4.X\bin\grass64.bat
• on the osgeo4w shell through the grass64.bat

To start GRASS with graphical user interface, click on the desktop icon.

How to get command line:

• Start the osgeo4w shell. Then type:

     grass64 -text
  

How to start GRASS with the new wxPython GUI:

• Start the osgeo4w shell. Then type:

     grass64 -wxpython
  

Alternatively from the Tcl/Tk GUI go to Config -> GRASS working environment -> Change settings -> GRASS variable to set -> "GRASS_GUI=wxpython" If it doesn't work, make sure that python is in the path.

Later Installation Update

• It is sufficient to re-run the installer which fetches the list of packages to then suggest available updates for the individual packages.

Lab Installation as offline set of packages

While the OSGeo4W installer is nice for individual installs, it may be problematic for institutional lab installs, where IT managers want to have stand alone applications that they can test, install, and remove easily. To install OSGeo4W-GRASS package as stand alone, see

• How do I perform an offline or computer lab install?
• and ​Unattended install of QGIS (et al) from OSGeo4W

Errata

• While the GRASS libraries and modules are typically extremely well tested and stable, this new Windows install package is not. Because we are very confident in the underlying GIS code we hope that any problems due to the new Windows packaging efforts will be superficial and quickly resolved. You can help this process by reporting bugs: if it seems to be the fault of the installer report bugs to the OSGeo4W bug tracker, if it seems to be the fault of GRASS, report bugs to the ​GRASS bug tracker. You will need to create yourself an ​OSGeo ID to submit and comment on bugs. Bugs don't get fixed unless people point them out! It is expected that some issues related to spaces in the path names still exist, but we hope to have found most of these by now. Also it is likely that the wxPython GUI still has some gremlins in it, please help us find and fix them by reporting any errors you come across! Typically once found they are easy to fix. You can help to find spaces-in-the-path bugs by installing OSGeo4W into "Program Files\OSGeo4W" and setting the GRASS data directory to "Documents and Settings\username".

• If a bunch of errors appear in the DOS command window (e.g. "Traceback ... wxgui.py, line 1234") you can cut and paste these to a text file or bug report by right-clicking on the window and selecting "Mark". Scroll up to the top of the text and drag the highlight box down over the text with the left mouse button. When you are done highlighting right click. You can then Paste the text from the clipboard.

• GRASS "monitors" are not present in this build due to an unresolved ​problem replacing ​Unix-domain sockets ​with pipes or TCP sockets and so some interactive modules which require them, such as i.class and i.ortho.photo, will not work. You will need to use a Cygwin build for Windows to use those modules or help port them to the new multi-platform wxPython GUI.

• Probably more ...

See also the ​known issues wiki page.

TODO

• Yet the cmd style doesn't change, which is confusing (prompt).
  • <- ? please submit a tract ticket
  • HB: [do you mean the C:\> command prompt?]
  • see ​here, e.g., 'prompt GRASS 6.4 $p$g'
  • HB: ?? prompt is already set by etc/init.bat- including version, location, and PWD. I have just changed it in develbranch_6 to be like "GRASS 6.4.0RC3 (spearfish60)> " ie remove PWD as it was badly cluttering the screen (due to $PWD being C:/Documents and Settings/username/Desktop/ and fixed 80col cmd window). I also added a space to the EOL. FWIW I would personally prefer the prompt to be just "GRASS> ". I can see that location name could be useful for multi-session users, but version is probably only useful for devels running multiple versions at once. For users is mostly clutter, and available from g.version.

Packager Notes

• Compile guide used: ​http://www.webalice.it/marco.pasetti/grass/BuildFromSource.html (updated but yet incomplete new documentation ​here (MinGW) and ​here (MSVC))
• Details on WinGRASS at: ​http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/WinGRASS_Current_Status
• Steps:
  • compile GRASS in a way that it fits in the OSGeo4W directory hierarchy. Example: ​http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/branches/develbranch_6/mswindows/osgeo4w/package.sh
  • package in a tar.bz2 file
  • if needed, write/update "etc/postinstall/$paketname.bat" which is executed after extraction of the package during installation to define menu stuff and link on user desktop.
• Depends on the MSYS package for command line operations, because GRASS 6 uses unix shell scripts (GRASS 7 uses Python)
• WinGRASS is built with MSYS/MinGW. The libraries used to link to the VC++ built GDAL & friends is in the mingw-libs package (copies of the libraries: foo.lib renamed to libfoo.a).
• Release tree: ​http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/release/grass/ (the installer selects the package with highest version number)
• Maintainer is JuergenFischer (seeking new package maintainer)