Geospatial - GIS

Portable GIS Version 3, almost everything from a USB

The third version of Portable GIS has been announced, a tool we made Review three years ago, just when version 2 was launched in July 2009. By the way, I remember having resorted to it in the days that the democratic crisis in Honduras forced us to work from our homes, and almost everything from a USB with the paranoia that here can happen anything.

I would have liked to see gvSIG 1.11 in this version but it seems that volunteering to work on this has not been enough. We miss in this version, that they are gone: uDig, Geoserver and gvSIG. Now it hardly brings Quantum GIS.

It is notorious that to make this version they have become disenchanted with Java, which is the platform on which these tools are built, they have also reiterated that it will only run on Windows and it does not bring the full stack that came with apache / php / mysql. We understand that being Mysql from Oracle, it is better to go for PostgreSQL which seems good to us with the authority that it has become in spatial databases and complemented with PostGIS.

A pity with desktop tools, but this is sustainability in the technological field, you can not cover everything without running the risk of squeezing too little, much less when it is for altruism.

Portable gis

But, let's see what brings back Portable GIS 3

  • Quantum GIS 1.8.0, on that date was the version 1.02
  • PostgreSQL 9.0.6, before had 8.4.01. This includes GRASS and that wonderful ability to export to Mapserver almost in one click.
  • PostGIS 1.5.3 in replacement of Psql Tools
  • MS4W 3.0.4 which includes Mapserver 5.6 and 6.0. Before it came Mapserver but as FWTools libraries. Also through this way they solve OpenLayers that can now be called from Mapserver 6 ..
  • PgAdmin III now in 1.12.3 version, before brought the 1.10
  • Pyton 2.7, also before it came as a complement to the FWTools libraries
  • Also comes Loader, with which we suppose solve what occupies Pyton to manage KML / GML in the database PostgreSQL
  • GDAL and ogr always come as FWTools libraries

In general, it is regrettable that it no longer brings the other tools mentioned at the beginning, but it seems to us an interesting concentration of efforts with which data can be built, managed in a database and published, although for this it has been necessary to stay under the line of C ++ language. Although the author has promised to include other things on demand, it would not be bad if a stable version of gvSIG and Geoserver could be included, we hope that the bitch crisis in Spain does not prevent gvSIG from remaining positioned in this context.

Another difference is that it is now available for download from Dropbox, which complicates a bit since the bandwidth is limited and it becomes slow. If the charge becomes almost zero, it is canceled and it must be tested the next day.

It is clear that it is a tool not for production, but an interesting exercise.

From here it can be downloaded

Here is a Support forum


I expected in the article to include the revision of gvSIG 1.12 that has been announced as final, but in spite of my optimism I could not load add-ons because the add-on manager that shows broken access: http://gvsig.freegis.ru/download / gvsig-desktop returns an error message and with http://downloads.gvsig.org/download/gvsig-desktop for more than it seems to do everything, it does not update when restarting the program.

Golgi Alvarez

Writer, researcher, specialist in Land Management Models. He has participated in the conceptualization and implementation of models such as: National Property Administration System SINAP in Honduras, Management Model of Joint Municipalities in Honduras, Integrated Cadastre-Registry Management Model in Nicaragua, Territory Administration System SAT in Colombia . Editor of the Geofumadas knowledge blog since 2007 and creator of the AulaGEO Academy that includes more than 100 courses on GIS - CAD - BIM - Digital Twins topics.

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