Installation

These pages describe how to install PROJ on your computer without compiling it yourself. Below are guides for installing on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This is a good place to get started if this is your first time using PROJ. More advanced users may want to compile the software themselves.

Installation from package management systems

Cross platform

PROJ is also available via cross platform package managers.

Conda

The conda package manager includes several PROJ packages. We recommend installing from the conda-forge channel:

conda install -c conda-forge proj

Using conda you can also install the PROJ data package. Here's how to install the proj-data package:

conda install -c conda-forge proj-data

Available is also the legacy packages proj-datumgrid-europe, proj-datumgrid-north-america, proj-datumgrid-oceania and proj-datumgrid-world.

Tip

Read more about the various datumgrid packages available here.

Docker

A Docker image with just PROJ binaries and a full compliment of grid shift files is available on DockerHub. Get the package with:

docker pull osgeo/proj

Windows

The simplest way to install PROJ on Windows is to use the OSGeo4W software distribution. OSGeo4W provides easy access to many popular open source geospatial software packages. After installation you can use PROJ from the OSGeo4W shell. To install PROJ do the following:

Note

If you have already installed software via OSGeo4W on your computer, or if you have already installed QGIS on your computer, it is likely that PROJ is already installed. Type "OSGeo4W Shell" in your start menu and check whether that gives a match.

  1. Download the 64 bit installer.

  2. Run the OSGeo4W setup program.

  3. Select "Advanced Install" and press Next.

  4. Select "Install from Internet" and press Next.

  5. Select a installation directory. The default suggestion is fine in most cases. Press Next.

  6. Select "Local package directory". The default suggestion is fine in most cases. Press Next.

  7. Select "Direct connection" and press Next.

  8. Choose the download.osgeo.org server and press Next.

  9. Find "proj" under "Commandline_Utilities" and click the package in the "New" column until the version you want to install appears.

  10. Press next to install PROJ.

You should now have a "OSGeo" menu in your start menu. Within that menu you can find the "OSGeo4W Shell" where you have access to all the OSGeo4W applications, including proj.

For those who are more inclined to the command line, steps 2--10 above can be accomplished by executing the following command:

C:\temp\osgeo4w-setup.exe -q -k -r -A -s https://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/v2/ -P proj

Linux

How to install PROJ on Linux depends on which distribution you are using. Below is a few examples for some of the more common Linux distributions:

Debian

On Debian and similar systems (e.g. Ubuntu) the APT package manager is used:

sudo apt-get install proj-bin

Fedora

On Fedora the dnf package manager is used:

sudo dnf install proj

Red Hat

On Red Hat based system packages are installed with yum:

sudo yum install proj

Mac OS X

On OS X PROJ can be installed via the Homebrew package manager:

brew install proj

PROJ is also available from the MacPorts system:

sudo ports install proj

Compilation and installation from source code

The classic way of installing PROJ is via the source code distribution. The most recent version is available from the download page.

The following guides show how to compile and install the software using CMake.

Note

Support for Autotools was maintained until PROJ 8.2 (see PROJ RFC 7: Drop Autotools, maintain CMake). PROJ 9.0 and later releases only support builds using CMake.

Requirements

Build requirements

  • C99 compiler

  • C++11 compiler

  • CMake >= 3.16

  • SQLite3 >= 3.11: headers and library for target architecture, and sqlite3 executable for build architecture

  • libtiff >= 4.0 (optional but recommended)

  • curl >= 7.29.0 (optional but recommended)

  • JSON for Modern C++ (nlohmann/json) >= 3.7.0; if not found as an external dependency then vendored version 3.9.1 from PROJ source tree is used

Test requirements

These are only required if testing is built (see BUILD_TESTING, default ON)

Build steps

With the CMake build system you can compile and install PROJ on more or less any platform. After unpacking the source distribution archive step into the source- tree:

cd proj-9.6.0-dev

Create a build directory and step into it:

mkdir build
cd build

From the build directory you can now configure CMake, build and install the binaries:

cmake ..
cmake --build .
cmake --build . --target install

On Windows, one may need to specify generator:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" ..

If the SQLite3 dependency is installed in a custom location, specify CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH:

cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/SQLite ..

Tests are run with:

ctest

With a successful install of PROJ, we can now install data files using the projsync utility:

projsync --system-directory --all

which will download all resource files currently available for PROJ. If less than the entire collection of resource files is needed the call to projsync can be modified to suit the users needs. See projsync for more options.

Note

The use of projsync requires that network support is enabled (the default option). If the resource files are not installed using projsync PROJ will attempt to fetch them automatically when a transformation needs a specific data file. This requires that PROJ_NETWORK is set to ON.

As an alternative on systems where network access is disabled, the proj-data package can be downloaded and its content decompressed into one of the directories where PROJ looks for resources

Starting with PROJ 9.2, a uninstall target is available to remove files installed by the install target:

cmake --build . --target uninstall

CMake configure options

Options to configure a CMake are provided using -D<var>=<value>. All cached entries can be viewed using cmake -LAH from a build directory.

BUILD_APPS=ON

Build PROJ applications. Default is ON. Control the default value for BUILD_CCT, BUILD_CS2CS, BUILD_GEOD, BUILD_GIE, BUILD_PROJ, BUILD_PROJINFO and BUILD_PROJSYNC. Note that changing its value after having configured once will not change the value of the individual BUILD_CCT, ... options.

Changed in version 8.2.

BUILD_CCT=ON

Build cct, default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_CS2CS=ON

Build cs2cs,default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_GEOD=ON

Build geod, default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_GIE=ON

Build gie, default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_PROJ=ON

Build proj, default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_PROJINFO=ON

Build projinfo, default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_PROJSYNC=ON

Build projsync, default is the value of BUILD_APPS.

BUILD_SHARED_LIBS

Build PROJ library shared. Default is ON. See also the CMake documentation for BUILD_SHARED_LIBS.

Changed in version 7.0: Renamed from BUILD_LIBPROJ_SHARED

Note

before PROJ 9.0, the default was OFF for Windows builds.

BUILD_TESTING=ON

CTest option to build the testing tree. Default is ON, but can be turned OFF if tests are not required. See test requirements for other details.

Changed in version 7.0: Renamed from PROJ_TESTS

CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE

Choose the type of build, options are: None (default), Debug, Release, RelWithDebInfo, or MinSizeRel. See also the CMake documentation for CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE.

Note

A default build is not optimized without specifying -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release (or similar) during configuration, or by specifying --config Release with CMake multi-configuration build tools (see example below).

PROJ_OUTPUT_NAME

Added in version 9.5.

Sets the name of the PROJ library (excluding extension). This generally defaults to "proj", except on Windows, where this defaults to "proj_${PROJ_MAJOR_VERSION}" if APPEND_SOVERSION is OFF.

Note

For PROJ >= 6.0 and up to 9.4.1, on Windows, this was hardcoded to "proj_${PROJ_MAJOR_VERSION}_${PROJ_MINOR_VERSION}".

APPEND_SOVERSION=OFF

Added in version 9.5.

This variable can be set to ON for MinGW builds where BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON, to add a "-${PROJ_SOVERSION}" suffix to the PROJ shared library name. When this variable is set, PROJ_OUTPUT_NAME defaults to "proj"

CMAKE_C_COMPILER

C compiler. Ignored for some generators, such as Visual Studio.

CMAKE_C_FLAGS

Flags used by the C compiler during all build types. This is initialized by the CFLAGS environment variable.

CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER

C++ compiler. Ignored for some generators, such as Visual Studio.

CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS

Flags used by the C++ compiler during all build types. This is initialized by the CXXFLAGS environment variable.

CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX

Default for Windows is based on the environment variable OSGEO4W_ROOT (if set), otherwise is c:/OSGeo4W. Default for Unix-like is /usr/local/.

CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH

CMake variable used to specify installation prefixes for SQLite3 and other dependencies.

CMAKE_UNITY_BUILD=OFF

Added in version 9.4.

Default is OFF. This can be set to ON to build PROJ using the CMAKE_UNITY_BUILD. feature. This helps speeding PROJ build times. This feature is still considered experimental for now, and could hide subtle bugs (we are not aware of any at writing time though). We don't recommend it for mission critical builds.

ENABLE_IPO=OFF

Build library using the compiler's interprocedural optimization (IPO), if available, default OFF.

Changed in version 7.0: Renamed from ENABLE_LTO.

EXE_SQLITE3

Path to an sqlite3 or sqlite3.exe executable.

Note

When cross-compiling, the executable pointed by EXE_SQLITE3 must be of the same architecture as the host, not of the architecture you build for. That sqlite3 binary is used to build the proj.db SQLite3 database from source .sql files.

Deprecated since version 9.4.0: SQLITE3_INCLUDE_DIR and SQLITE3_LIBRARY should be replaced with SQLite3_INCLUDE_DIR and SQLite3_LIBRARY, respectively. Users may also consider CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH instead.

ENABLE_CURL=ON

Enable CURL support, default ON.

CURL_INCLUDE_DIR

Path to an include directory with the curl directory.

CURL_LIBRARY

Path to a shared or static library file, such as libcurl.dll, libcurl.so, libcurl.lib, or other name.

ENABLE_TIFF=ON

Enable TIFF support to use PROJ-data resource files, default ON.

TIFF_INCLUDE_DIR

Path to an include directory with the tiff.h header file.

TIFF_LIBRARY_RELEASE

Path to a shared or static library file, such as tiff.dll, libtiff.so, tiff.lib, or other name. A similar variable TIFF_LIBRARY_DEBUG can also be specified to a similar library for building Debug releases.

USE_CCACHE=OFF

Configure CMake to use ccache (or clcache for MSVC) to build C/C++ objects.

PROJ_DB_CACHE_DIR

Path to an existing directory used to cache proj.db to speed-up subsequent builds without modifications to source SQL files.

TESTING_USE_NETWORK=ON

Added in version 9.5.

Permit use of network to fetch test requirements (if needed) and run network-dependent tests. Default ON.

EMBED_PROJ_DATA_PATH

Added in version 9.5.

Embed PROJ_DATA hard-coded alternative path for data files location. Disable to avoid setting this non-relocatable hard-coded path. Default ON.

EMBED_RESOURCE_FILES=ON/OFF

Added in version 9.6.

Default is OFF for shared library builds (BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON), and ON for static library builds (BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF). When ON, proj.db and proj.ini will be embedded into the PROJ library.

USE_ONLY_EMBEDDED_RESOURCE_FILES=ON/OFF

Added in version 9.6.

Even if EMBED_RESOURCE_FILES=ON, by default PROJ will still try to locate proj.db and proj.ini on the file system, and fallback to the embedded version if not found. By setting USE_ONLY_EMBEDDED_RESOURCE_FILES=ON, no attempt at locating those files on the file system is made. Default is OFF. Users will also typically want to set EMBED_PROJ_DATA_PATH=OFF if setting USE_ONLY_EMBEDDED_RESOURCE_FILES=OFF.

Building on Windows with vcpkg and Visual Studio 2017 or 2019

This method is the preferred one to generate Debug and Release builds.

Install git

Install git

Install Vcpkg

Assuming there is a c:\dev directory

cd c:\dev
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git

cd vcpkg
.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

Install PROJ dependencies

vcpkg install sqlite3[core,tool] tiff curl --triplet=x86-windows
vcpkg install sqlite3[core,tool] tiff curl --triplet=x64-windows

Note

The tiff and curl dependencies are only needed since PROJ 7.0

Checkout PROJ sources

cd c:\dev
git clone https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ.git

Build PROJ

cd c:\dev\PROJ
mkdir build_vs2019
cd build_vs2019
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=C:\dev\vcpkg\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake ..
cmake --build . --config Debug -j 8

Run PROJ tests

cd c:\dev\PROJ\build_vs2019
ctest -V --build-config Debug

Building on Windows with Conda dependencies and Visual Studio 2017 or 2019

Variant of the above method but using Conda for SQLite3, TIFF and CURL dependencies. It is less appropriate for Debug builds of PROJ than the method based on vcpkg.

Install git

Install git

Install miniconda

Install miniconda

Install PROJ dependencies

Start a Conda enabled console and assuming there is a c:\dev directory

cd c:\dev
conda create --name proj
conda activate proj
conda install sqlite libtiff curl cmake

Note

The libtiff and curl dependencies are only needed since PROJ 7.0

Checkout PROJ sources

cd c:\dev
git clone https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ.git

Build PROJ

From a Conda enabled console

conda activate proj
cd c:\dev\PROJ
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
cmake -S . -B _build.vs2019 -DCMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH:FILEPATH="%CONDA_PREFIX%/Library/lib" -DCMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH:FILEPATH="%CONDA_PREFIX%/Library/include"
cmake --build _build.vs2019 --config Release -j 8

Run PROJ tests

cd c:\dev\PROJ
cd _build.vs2019
ctest -V --build-config Release