pgrouting - 2

For loading OSM data in a format already ready for pgRouting queries, the two common tools I've seen used are osm2po and osm2pgrouting. Unfortunately osm2pgrouting has been for a long time a Unix only tool mostly because no one tried to compile it for windows or test it on windows to see if it works. So this means that windows users who wanted a quick road to pgRouting nirvana had to use osm2po. Turns out the osm2pgrouting code compiles fine on windows (at least under mingw-w64 chain) and seems to work fine, so we should start making it available for windows.

This is still experimental, but if you are a windows user (or have a pgRouting windows user friend) and want to kick the tires a bit, you'll find osm2pgrouting for windows (both 32-bit and 64-bit) binaries on the PostGIS windows download page in the Unreleased section.

I compiled osm2pgrouting (for pgRouting 2.0) against PostgreSQL 9.4 using the same mingw-w64 chain I use to build PostGIS and pgRouting for windows -- clumsily detailed in my gist shell scripts - . Though it depends on libpq, it seems to work fine if you use it against the PostgreSQL 9.3 libpq. So just need to copy the additional files (osm2pgrouting and expat) into your PostgreSQL bin folder and you are good to go loading data into a pgRouting enabled database. It is assumed you already have PostGIS 2.1+ and pgRouting 2.0 already installed which come bundled together as part of the PostGIS 2.1+ windows installers and also available on the PostGIS windows download page.

Which should you use: osm2pgrouting or osm2po?

In many ways osm2po is superior to osm2pgrouting and has had more time invested in it. It can handle larger files on smaller machines, can work with the OSM pbf format, and it supports both Unix like and windows platforms. That said osm2po is not absolutely superior to osm2pgrouting. osm2po is inferior in a couple of ways that are important to me.

• It's not open source, it's freeware -- which means you can't kick the code around and learn from it or inspect it. It also means you can't change it and contribute back your changes.
• The primary motive of osm2po is not as a loading tool for pgRouting. osm2po is a complete routing engine with webserver which doesn't even rely on PostgreSQL. That said, if the maintainer decides one day providing a pgRouting export is no longer beneficial to osm2po development path, or pgRouting devs need to tweak it a bit to work with newer pgRouting, it will be difficult.
• It's written in Java. This is my own personal dislike. Not that anything is wrong with Java, it's just sometimes a bit of a nuisance to get the VM going on a server I happen to get stuck on that I can't install anything I want. osm2pgrouting is much lighter weight not requiring a JVM, though it does require PostgreSQL,PostGIS, and pgRouting -- which you should have already.
• osm2po generates an intermediary sql file which you then have to load via psql. I prefer the direct load approach of osm2pgrouting over having a big-o sql file to contend with after.

That said osm2po is great in many ways, but alternatives are always nice to have. Only annoying thing with having alternatives is deciding which alternative is best for what you are doing.

Paul Ramsey has been working on this new feature to PostgreSQL for supporting LIDAR data called Point Cloud and the project is beginning to garner a lot of interest, particularly because Point Cloud support has been a hole in the PostGIS offering of support for some time now and people have developed make shift ways of working with said data by storing them in geometry points.

Thanks to the gracious support of Coordinate Solutions for funding our build efforts, we now have Point Cloud extension builds for PostgreSQL 9.2 and upcoming 9.3 releases (both 32-bit and 64-bit). The point cloud work is still a work in progress and as such part of our work was to automate the builds so that whenever changes are made to the point cloud codebase, Winnie PostGIS build bot bakes a fresh set of binary builds. These builds can currently be found:

• PostgreSQL 9.2 (x32 and x64) Point Cloud download
• PostgreSQL 9.3 (x32 and x64) Point Cloud download

The PostGIS development team is proud to release a release candidate version of upcoming PostGIS 2.1.0. As befits a minor release, the focus is on speed improvements, more features, and bug fixes. We expect this to be the final release candidate before we officially release 2.1.0. We'd appreciate it if you test it before final release and report back with any issues you run into so we can have a smooth release.

2.1.0rc1 release source files http://download.osgeo.org/postgis/source/postgis-2.1.0rc1.tar.gz

We are shooting for a final release in the next week or two.

Document downloads:

• HTML http://download.osgeo.org/postgis/docs/doc-html-2.1.0rc1.tar.gz
• PDF http://download.osgeo.org/postgis/docs/postgis-2.1.0rc1.pdf
• EPUB http://download.osgeo.org/postgis/docs/postgis-2.1.0rc1.epub

32/64-bit RC1 Binaries for windows users for PostgreSQL 9.2/9.3 are already available.

As mentioned in prior article we have windows binaries available for upcoming pgRouting. When we get new things, we like to take them for a test drive. So we've put up our first tutorial ever on pgRouting: pgRouting: Loading OpenStreetMap with Osm2Po and route querying. The OSM2PO pgRouting loading content we borrowed from Anita Graser's An osm2po Quickstart, but put a Boston spin to it.

We hope to use this tutorial series as a springboard for testing the radical changes in pgRouting currently going on.

We've made our first huge milestone. With much of Steve Woodbridge's help and patience as well as support from pgRouting Windows campaign sponsors, we have windows PostgreSQL 9.2 binaries for the pgRouting 1.07 development branch for both PostgreSQL 32-bit and 64-bit. You can download these from: Winnie's 9.2 windows downloads. Details on how to install are described on Windows download page at bottom. Please give these a try to see if they work okay for you. These binaries will work for PostGIS 2+ releases as well as the experimental PostGIS 2.1 builds and upcoming PostGIS 2.1 release.

We are still missing payments from some pgRouting sponsors. So if you haven't sent us payment yet, please do so. If you weren't on the initial campaign and would still like to give, you can still contact us at lr at pcorp dot us to make payment arrangements. If you want to contribute, we ask you do $100 USD or more since smaller amounts are too much bookkeeping. Any additional money's will go toward work on pgRouting 2.0 (not just Windows but general support of the rewrite) and future buildbot upgrades.

Steve is now pushing further forward with upcoming pgRouting 2.0, so the pgRouting code base will soon be a bit volatile and unstable. We are still in middle of setting up the buildbot to automate the future builds and then come PostGIS 2.1, you can expect to see pgRouting included in the PostgreSQL 9.2+ PostGIS 2.1 application stack builder packages.

The Boston OSGeo Code Sprint ended today. Overall I think it was a great success just in terms of what was accomplished and the fact that it was the very first conference we had ever set up. We were all nerves so couldn't enjoy it as much as we wanted to. It was also the first conference we were able to sorta attend all days for.

Paul already gave a great cap on what was going on in the PostGIS and MapServer camps. I still felt like there was way too much coding going on and would be nice to have a bit more talking and a bit less typing.

I want to thank EnterpriseDb for being a Gold Sponsor and it would have been nice if they gave a talk. Maybe I can drag them in some other day. Rich Grady, of AppGeo gave a wonderful and humorous talk about the metamophisis AppGeo is going thru coming from a predominantly ESRI shop, now focused on the prize of finding the best solutions to solve spatial IT problems; which surprisingly does not always involve ESRI and is more and more requiring Open Source GIS technologies. They did show off their ESRI medals of honor and how well they kept papers from flying around.

For those who contributed to our pgRouting campaign, a BIG THANKS. We'll be circling back later this week or early next to try to finish collecting and charging credit cards. If you already wrote us asking, but how do I pay? and we haven't responded with details, don't worry about it. We'll get to you next week. More concerned about those who haven't contacted us.

The Boston OSGeo Code Sprint is just days away . Looking forward to seeing a lot of you. Of course, if you'd like to still sponsor some money to offset the cost of sprinters, that would be appreciated.

One of the projects we will be spending a lot of effort on is pgRouting on windows with special focus on pgRouting 2.0. Steve Woodbridge is doing much of the work on both the pgRouting 2.0 (making sure works cleanly with PostGIS 2.0+ series) and also helping us work out the issues with building under windows. That said -- if you promised to give us money for pgRouting windows campaign and haven't contacted us yet, PLEASE DO SO (lr at pcorp dot us). Of course, if you weren't on the campaign, it's not too late to subsidize this effort. Just contact us directly. It will go towards pgRouting on windows, general pgRouting cleanup, integration with PostGIS 2.0+ series, and CREATE EXTENSION support.

Just a heads up to folks who are interested in funding our Windows pgRouting campaign. We need 5 more sponsors before March 1st to make our target funding of 20 sponsors (each giving a $100 USD). With the funding we'll build pgRouting for both 32 and 64/bit PostgreSQL 9.2 and package with upcoming PostGIS 2.1.0. We also plan that barring no issues, all future versions of PostGIS and PostgreSQL we will package with pgRouting. So in a nutshell, this means that when you download from StackBuilder, PostGIS, you'll be getting a pgRouting extension as well that you can install. Yap that's right you'll be able to do: CREATE EXTENSION pgRouting;

We also plan to before PostGIS 2.1.0 release have pgRouting available via the winnie PostGIS build bot builds for those who want to experiment with it before release.

Devrim has pgRouting packages built for PostgreSQL 9.1 and 9.2 and will make those available on yum.postgresql.org. This thanks to generous sponsorship support from Norsk institutt for skog og landska.

We just started a new pledge drive to package pgRouting for windows along side the PostGIS windows install. and we are asking for $100 USD from each sponsor. What will you get by sponsoring our work:

• We will at least for PostgreSQL 9.2+ (both 32-bit and 64-bit) installs that we will package pgRouting as an extension you can install with something like CREATE EXTENSION pgRouting;. If there is enough interest and not too difficult we'll try to do the same for PostgreSQL 9.1 Windows.
• This we hope to start doing with the PostGIS 2.1.0 experimental build releases and final release
• This means that when you install PostGIS from application stackbuilder, you'll also get pgRouting. For simplicity, we are going to try to have it as a single install so that PostGIS 2.1.0 for windows will mean PostGIS + pgRouting

As a side benefit, we are also hoping that this will drive better integration between PostGIS / pgRouting. For one have extension offering to pgRouting, and also test out the CMake PostGIS build process and benchmark level of effort to fully integrate the 2 projects.

If you want to see this happen, please provide a $100 USD sponsorship. If you'd like to give more than that, you can write to us off-list at lr at pcorp.us.