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 xsltproc docbook-xsl docbook-mathml

Optional package for raster support (recommended):

sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev

Build GEOS 3.3.x

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-3.3.6.tar.bz2
tar xvfj geos-3.3.6.tar.bz2
cd geos-3.3.6
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Build PostGIS

wget http://download.osgeo.org/postgis/source/postgis-2.0.1.tar.gz
tar xfvz postgis-2.0.1.tar.gz
cd postgis-2.0.1

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 ldconfig
sudo make comments-install

Lastly, enable the command-line tools to work from your shell:

sudo ln -sf /usr/share/postgresql-common/pg_wrapper /usr/local/bin/shp2pgsql
sudo ln -sf /usr/share/postgresql-common/pg_wrapper /usr/local/bin/pgsql2shp
sudo ln -sf /usr/share/postgresql-common/pg_wrapper /usr/local/bin/raster2pgsql

Using enabler scripts

Enabler scripts can be used to either build a template, or directly spatially enable a database.

The following example creates 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. Install PostGIS:

createdb template_postgis
createlang plpgsql template_postgis
psql -d template_postgis -c "UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate=true WHERE datname='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

with raster support:

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

with topology support:

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