Setting up GDAL

Some of the data processing tasks required for effective cartography in TileMill require the use of external tools. GDAL is a geographic library that provides a powerful set of tools for working with a wide variety of raster and vector geographic data.

Max OS X

On Mac OS X you can install the “GDAL Complete” Framework from kyngchaos.com.

GDAL applications are run through the Mac OS X Terminal. The first time you install the GDAL package there is one additional step to make sure you can access these programs. Open the Terminal application and run the following commands:

echo 'export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Programs:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

You should now be ready to go. To test your installation, run the Terminal command gdalinfo --version. A correct installation will output something like GDAL 1.9.0, released 2011/12/29.

Linux

On Ubuntu simply install the gdal-bin package with your package manager.

sudo apt-get install gdal-bin

For other distributions, search your package repository for ‘gdal’. See also OSGeo’s GDAL Binaries information.

GDAL applications are run through the terminal. To test your installation, run the terminal command gdalinfo --version. A correct installation will output something like GDAL 1.9.0, released 2011/12/29.