Author: William Kyngesburye

QGIS is updated to v3.10.7 LTR & 3.14.0 and GDAL Complete is updated to 3.1.1.

NOTE: PDF read support is not included in GDAL/QGIS yet.  I’m working on it.  It will be built into GDAL this time due to the licensing difference in the new base PDF library, but is difficult to get built properly.

NOTE: In attempting to update GDAL on an old Mac I discovered that it does not work on Sierra.  I’m sure I have all the options set to enable it on Sierra, but it’s possible the updated Xcode on my development Mac has a bug with this.  If this is the case then I will not be able to fix it and I will have to bump the system requirements to High Sierra.  By dependency, this affects QGIS, PostGIS and pgRouting.  It’s likely Postgres is also affected directly.

UPDATE: The QGIS 3.14 installer was not configured correctly and overwrote QGIS LTR.  Now fixed.

UPDATE 2: I think I figured out the Sierra crash problem – it was really an old hardware problem, now should be fixed.  System requirements now back down to Sierra.

Finally caught up.

The GDAL Complete framework package gets a full update of all components, including the primary GDAL framework updating to 3.1.  Python support updated to Python 3.8.  The Sqlite/Spatialite/Rasterlite framework has been split into separate frameworks because of new interdependencies.

Postgres is now at v12.3.  PostGIS is updated to 3.0.1.

QGIS updated to the latest 3.10 LTR and 3.12 current versions.  Some packaging issues have been ironed out. I will be keeping my separation of QGIS, GDAL and Python.

There may be problems installing or using my packages on macOS Catalina.

I don’t have a new enough Mac to install Catalina on.  But this is what I’ve read about so far:

Installers must now also be notarized, in addition to the signing.  While signing is something the developer does, notarizing is done by Apple.  Both require a paid developer account, which I do not and probably will never do.

Running/allowing installations is pretty much the same, the notarization check can also be bypassed by using “Open” from right-clicking an installer package.

There are huge changes to the file system, though they are transparent to the user.  Mainly, the system is now locked off in a read-only part of the file system.  I think most of my installers are OK with this.  Postgres, PostGIS and pgRouting may have problems, as they are installed in a part of the system that may not be accessible.

There are also new access provisions – there may be a lot of alerts popping up asking to allow access to parts of the file system.

Well, my QGIS build is now an official alternate build, and the download hosting returns to my site.  It seems many people think an all-in-one drag-n-drop installation is THE correct method of Mac app installation.  I’ll keep doing my build my way as long as I have the energy and interest (hopefully for a long time).

There may be some changes.

• I’ll keep the separate components installation (ie outside the QGIS app) – I especially use GDAL extensively in the Terminal and Automator and with python.
• I don’t know yet if I’ll keep everything on one disk image, but at least I’ll probably separate GDAL back into its own installer, that’s easier to maintain.
• I’m thinking about externalizing GRASS for Processing.  Probably using the official GRASS app.  Direct GRASS data access would still use an internal GRASS, but it will only be enough for data access, maybe combined with the GDAL GRASS plugin.  Maybe this will help it actually work.  Though, the GRASS app is also all-in-one, adding to the duplication bloat.  GRASS is a very low priority for me.

I need to work on some major updates – GDAL 3, PROJ 6, Postgres/PostGIS.

Postgres finally updated to 9.6, along with the PostGIS (to 2.4.5) and pgRouting (to 2.6.1) extensions. As with the rest of the recent packages (GDAL, QGIS), minimum macOS 10.10. That includes the transition PostGIS and pgRouting for for Postgres 9.4, because of C++ needs for pgRouting.

This is a major upgrade, see the upgrade readme on the disk image for details. A quick summary from Postgres 9.4 to 9.6 in place:

1. 1. Upgrade your system to at least 10.10 Yosemite
   2. Update PostGIS and pgRouting extensions (if installed) to the transition versions made for Postgres 9.4, including running extension updates on your databases
   3. Update Postgres to 9.6 plus the same-version extensions made for PG 9.6
   4. run pg_upgrade

QGIS 3.0.1 and 2.18.18 are available, and now you can download it from the QGIS website!

QGIS 3 can’t seem to find external tools, including Python, and GDAL tools and some needed for Processing. There used to be settings for this but they’re gone.

For now the workaround is to go to the QGIS Preferences -> System.

• Under the Environment section, turn on Use Custom Variables.
• Add (+) a variable
• Select Prepend from the Apply popup
• Enter PATH for the variable
• Enter the following for the value:
  • /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:/Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/2.2/Programs:
• Quit QGIS 3 and start it up again, GDAL tools and processing algorithms should find needed tools now.

QGIS 3.0.0-3 should fix the non-working GRASS problem. The key was my adding the “3” to the app name with a space, the GRASS internals didn’t like that. So I removed the space – it’s now QGIS3.app. The installer removes the contents of the original QGIS 3.app, but not the app folder itself, so you need to delete that from your Applications folder.

It also looks like the rebuild fixed the missing SAGA processing tools.

On to figuring out why GDAL tools do not work…

Because QGIS links the python library, you must install the python.org Python 3.6. You can’t substitute another python 3 installation. Sorry, that’s the way it is.