Hardware and software requirements

Hardware

A workstation running some flavor of UNIX like Solaris, IRIX, GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS X. GRASS also runs on on Win32 within the Cygwin environment. As a minimum, you should have at least 500 Mb for data and 32 Mb RAM. However this will allow you only a very limited usage of GRASS (although see here for GRASS on handhelds). For a serious usage of GRASS you will need 128MB at the very least. Obviously, a good video card is a must for cartography, ideally with 3D support.

Basic Software

• C-compiler (cc, gcc, egcs, ...)

  gcc: http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html

• GNU make is recommended

  http://www.gnu.org/software/make/make.html

• zlib compression library (already installed on modern systems)

  It is used to internally compress GRASS raster files: libz: http://www.gzip.org/zlib/

• lexical analyzer generator (flex),

  (lex is no longer supported, please use flex instead) - flex: http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/flex.html

• parser generator (yacc, bison)

  bison: http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/bison.html

• libncurses4.x/5.x (already installed on modern systems)

  http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/

• dgm/gdbm (dbm.h): GNU dbm is a set of database routines that use extendible hashing and works similar to the standard UNIX dbm routines. Currently not required.

  http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm/gdbm.html

• X11 window system for graphical output, development libraries (X development libraries, in some linux distributions they are separate packages)

  http://www.xfree.org

  (winGRASS: As alternative a generic MS-Windows driver is under construction which does not require X11)

Optional software

• Tcl/Tk 8.x libraries (they include 'wish') to use TclTkGRASS Interface and to compile src.contrib/GMSL/NVIZ2.2/

  http://tcl.sourceforge.net/

• Mesa-3.x (openGL clone) required for NVIZ2.2 (if your OS / graphic card libraries don't come with own OpenGL libraries)

  http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/

• FFTW (library for computing the Discrete Fourier Transform) required for i.fft and i.ifft modules

  http://www.fftw.org

• LAPACK / BLAS (libraries for numerical computing) required for GMATH library (GRASS numerical lib)

  http://www.netlib.org/lapack/ (usually present in Linux distros)

  Note: the support is intended for future module implementations

• libpng (for r.in.png, r.out.png), usually already installed.>

  http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html

• libjpeg (for r.in.tiff, r.out.tiff), usually already installed.

  http://www.ijg.org

  ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/

• libtiff (for r.in.tiff, r.out.tiff), usually already installed.

  http://www.libtiff.org

• libgd (for PNG driver), preferably GD 2.x.

  http://www.boutell.com/gd/

• netpbm-tools/libraries (for r.in.png/r.out.png), usually already installed.

  (please look at any decent software mirror near you!)

  http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/

  http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/netpbm/

• PostgreSQL libraries (for the PostgreSQL database interface)

  http://www.postgresql.org

• Unix ODBC (for the ODBC database interface)

  http://www.unixodbc.org

• Only required for "xanim" and "ogl3d": the Motif or Lesstif libraries

  http://www.lesstif.org

• r.in.gdal requires GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library

  http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/

• R language (for the R language interface)

  http://cran.r-project.org

• FreeType2 (for d.text.freetype)

  http://www.freetype.org/