How to install PostGIS 2.0 on Debian 6.0 (squeeze) from source

Prerequisites

Several components are needed, which can either be built from source or installed from pre-built packages, as shown below. It is assumed you have already installed and configured sudo (not done by default).

Install prerequisite packages using:

sudo apt-get install build-essential postgresql-8.4 postgresql-server-dev-8.4 libxml2-dev proj libjson0-dev

Optional package for raster support:

sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev

Optional packages for testing PostGIS:

sudo apt-get install libcunit1-dev

Optional packages for building documentation:

sudo apt-get install xsltproc docbook-xsl docbook-mathml imagemagick

(for building PDF documentation, add dblatex, but expect a large download)

Build GEOS 3.3.2

PostGIS 2.0 requires GEOS >= 3.3.2 for topology support.

There are multiple ways to build GEOS, but this is the simplest:

wget http://download.osgeo.org/geos/geos-3.3.2.tar.bz2
tar xvfj geos-3.3.2.tar.bz2
cd geos-3.3.2
./configure
make
sudo make install

Build PostGIS

wget http://postgis.refractions.net/download/postgis-2.0.0beta2SVN.tar.gz
tar xfvz postgis-2.0.0beta2SVN.tar.gz
cd postgis-2.0.0beta2SVN

PostGIS 2.0 can be configured to disable topology or raster extensions, using the configure flags --without-raster and --without-topology. The default is to build both extensions:

./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo make comments-install

Template

Complete a post-install by creating a template, which can be re-used for creating multiple spatially-enabled databases. Or if you just want to make one spatially enabled database, you can modify the commands for your needs.

Log-in as postgres from root using "su - postgres", and use the following commands:

createdb template_postgis
createlang plpgsql template_postgis
psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/postgis.sql
psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/spatial_ref_sys.sql
psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/postgis_comments.sql

Enable raster extension

Adding on to template_postgis:

psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/rtpostgis.sql
psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/raster_comments.sql

Enable topology extension

Adding on to template_postgis:

psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/topology.sql
psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-2.0/topology_comments.sql