Building osgEarth

osgEarth is a cross-platform library. It uses the  CMake cross-platform build system, version 2.8 or newer. This is the same build system that  OpenSceneGraph uses.

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GET THE SOURCE CODE

Option 1: use GIT

osgEarth source is hosted on GitHub. You will need a git client to access it. We recommend  TortoiseGit for Windows users.

To clone the repository, point your client at:

 git://github.com/gwaldron/osgearth.git

The latest tagged release is Version 2.3. The git tag  osgearth-2.3.

Option 2: download a tarball

To download a tarball, visit the  Tags Page and select the one you want.

GET THE DEPENDENCIES

The following are REQUIRED DEPENDENCIES:

•  OpenSceneGraph 3.0 or later, with the CURL plugin enabled

•  GDAL 1.6 or later - Geospatial Data Abstraction Layer (version 1.5 will work too)

•  CURL - HTTP transfer library (comes with OSG 3rd party library distros)

The following are OPTIONAL DEPENDENCIES. osgEarth will compile without them, but some functionality will be missing:

•  GEOS 3.2.0 or later - C++ library for topological operations. This library is used by the osgEarthFeatures module to perform various geometry manipulation operations like buffering and intersection. If you plan to display vector/feature data in osgEarth, get this.

•  MiniZip - zip file extractor; include this is you want to read KMZ files. (Win32/VS9 binary at the bottom of this page)

•  SQLite 3.6 or later - embedded relational database engine. This is used by the cache_sqlite driver to cache tile data to an sqlite3 database.

•  V8 - Google's JavaScript interpreter. Inlcude this if you want to embed JavaScript code in your earth file.

Option: get the pre-built 3rd Party Binaries for Win32

•  OSG pre-built 3rd-party dependencies from AlphaPixel
•  OSG pre-built installations and 3rd-party dependencies from MEW (including CURL and GDAL)
•  Pre-built Expat for Win32
• MiniZIP for Win32 VS9
•  Some pre-built GDAL/OGR/PROJ downloads for various architectures

BUILD IT

osgEarth uses the  CMake build system, version 2.8 or newer.

Tips:

• For optional dependencies (like GEOS or V8) you can just leave the entries blank (even if CMake complains).
• For OSG, just input the OSG_DIR variable, generate, and CMake will find all the other OSG folder automatically.
• Ensure the "DYNAMIC_OSGEARTH" flag is ON. Building osgEarth as a static library does not yet work on all platforms.
• For the OPTIONAL dependencies listed above, just leave the corresponding entries blank if you don't want to use them.
• Sometimes CMake will complain that it cannot run osgversion. You can safely ignore this in most cases.

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GET PRE-BUILT BINARIES

Debian/Ubuntu? Packages

osgEarth is available pre-built for Debian Sid, Ubuntu Lucid, Maverick and Natty. Ubuntu packages are available from the UbuntuGis PPA. Installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable 

sudo aptitude install osgearth osgearth-data 

For trying osgEarth without installation you can download the OSGeo Live-DVD from  http://live.osgeo.org/

Thanks to Pirmin Kalberer for developing and maintaining these packages.

Windows Pacakges

•  osgEarth 2.0, VS10 (Built Feb 2011 - Thanks to Neil Neilson)

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Testing

Sample earth files are located within the subversion repository  here. Simple use 'osgviewer' (from the OpenSceneGraph distribution) to view a .earth file:

osgviewer gdal_tiff.earth

Basic Troubleshooting

The most common pitfall is shared libraries missing from your path. Your path should include:

• OSG and osgEarth binaries
• All of osgEarth's dependencies (Expat, CURL, and GDAL shared libs)
• OSG's 3rd-party dependencies (particularly zlib and the libpng)

If you get an error complaining about a missing CURL plugin:

• The CURL plugin is optional in the OSG CMake configuration. Make sure you enable and build it.

If you cannot get the GDAL driver to work properly:

• Make sure the GDAL shared library is in your path
• Set the GDAL_DATA environment variable to point to the folder containing GDAL's .csv files

If you still have problems, please  search the forums or post a question.