Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

Due to popular request (well, two people at least have asked) I have created a google group for Portable GIS, for support, enhancement requests, and other such things. At the moment you need to request an invitation to join, as I don’t fancy having to deal with even larger mountains of spam.

You can find it here: http://groups.google.com/group/portable-gis

Enjoy!

Someone (thanks Bruce) has alerted me to a mistake in Portable GIS, which luckily requires a very minor patch- so minor that I am not going to release a new version now and force everyone to download it again, although it will be fixed in the next version. Basically there is a line in the apache config that doesn’t update it’s drive letter because the slashes are the wrong way around.

To fix:

Go into .\usbgis\apps\xampplite\apache\conf\httpd.conf with a text editor and find the line (should be right at the end of the file):

SetEnv PROJ_LIB N:\usbgis\apps\FWTools2.1.0\proj_lib

Where you might have a slightly different drive letter. To fix, change the directions of the slashes in the file path from \ to / and change the drive letter to whatever your current drive letter is, and save the file. Then when you change the drive letter in future and run the xampp setup, it should automatically update.

Thanks for your patience, thanks again to Bruce for pointing it out, and thanks to everyone for downloading it!

I was contacted by someone who has downloaded portable GIS, very sensibly asking for information on the postgresql connection details. When I tried to respond to this person, their email address bounced back with a permanent failure, so I thought I’d better write something here so he doesn’t think I’m not replying!

Now, I was sure that I had included a readme file specific to the postgresql installation, but it looks like the pixies might have eaten it. Anyhow: the very secret local username and password for postgresql on the USB stick are: postgres and grespost. Please take the opportunity to create your own username and password if you are concerned about security. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

The next version (in a couple of months) will have better documentation- I promise. The trouble is that as every developer knows, creating documentation is the longest part of any project. If I had waited until I had some decent documentation I wouldn’t have released it at all, and believe me I’m glad I did, the reponse has been fabulous. I won’t, however, be including  documentation about how to use the programmes, as the majority of them already have pretty good user manuals online- I will include links to them though. You can hold me to that if you like!

Update: Due to issues with our download server, portable gis is not currently available. Investigations are taking place as to the exact cause and I will announce when it is fixed, though this may take a few days as I am away over the weekend. Thanks for your patience and your interest!

Version 1.2 of Portable GIS has been released today, addressing a number of bugs in Version 1.1. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and spotted the bugs. If you use, or intend to use, the web-based components of Portable GIS, or the OpenEV viewer, then this is a recommended update.

The download is available here, along with a patch to convert version 1.1 to 1.2. Please read the instructions provided in the patch file as the process is slightly complicated.

Feedback is, as ever, greatly appreciated, and thanks to the 100 or so people who have downloaded the first version!