Author: William Kyngesburye

macOS Catalina Support

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.

QGIS & Other Software Changes

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 & Extensions Big Update

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. 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

Site Update 2018

Well, I finally finished another site overhaul/conversion. This time from Dokuwiki to WordPress. I kept the design the same as much as I could (I like it, even though it’s not as modern as some would like).

Download links are all the same. Blog posts are (will be eventually) all converted, but links have all changed (though they are similar). Most page links are the same, unless it ends with “/index”, these just need “index” dropped to work, I may work out some rewrite magic to take care of that.

BUT, there are some pages that I have dropped and/or simplified. I don’t know if I’ll convert the build notes section, it’s way out of date and I don’t plan to maintain it.

Now that I have this (mostly) done, I can work on catching up with software…

QGIS 3 Tools & Processing Workaround

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

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…

QGIS 3

QGIS 3 is finally ready! As noted previously for GDAL 2.2, big packaging changes include minimum OS X Yosemite and Python 3. Also note that during installation it needs internet access to install the necessary Python modules. QGIS 3 installs as “QGIS 3.app”, so it can be used alongside QGIS 2.

Currently it is missing the globe plugin, I’ll work on adding that next. But it does include the new 3D features.

I’ve done little testing in my rush to get this ready. …argh, looks like the SAGA Processing provider is not working.

GDAL Complete 2.2 & Future Development

GDAL 2.2 is ready, along with all it’s friends. For now, I only have the GDAL Complete package, no GDAL plugins or individual frameworks. I’ll eventually package the GDAL plugins, but I think I’ll not make individual framework packages.

This marks another major release change.

The minimum system is now OS X 10.10 Yosemite. This is partly due to the usual change in my development system and my needs, but also for a fundamental need for C++11 in some components (while C++11 support is available in earlier systems, it is not developed enough).

Also, it is now only 64-bit.

Finally, I switched away from using the system Python — the frameworks and upcoming QGIS 3 will use a user-installed Python 3.

All the frameworks are made so they don’t conflict with earlier packages (even of the same version), but that also means they are not drop-in updates to the earlier packages.