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Installation

Warning

Only tested on Ubuntu 20.04! Installation on Windows is experimental.

Requirements#

autoMaps requires a recent version of Python, the Python package manager, pip, and the free and open source geographic information system QGIS to be installed on your system.

You can check if you already have these installed from the command line:

$ python --version
Python 3.8.2
$ pip --version
pip 20.0.2 from /usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pip (python 3.8)
$ qgis --version
QGIS 3.18.1-Zürich 'Zürich' (202f1bf7e5)

If you already have those packages installed, you may skip down to Installing autoMaps.

Installing Python#

Install Python using your package manager of choice, or by downloading an installer appropriate for your system from python.org and running it.

Installing pip#

If you're using a recent version of Python, the Python package manager, pip, is most likely installed by default. However, you may need to upgrade pip to the lasted version:

pip install --upgrade pip

If you need to install pip for the first time, download get-pip.py. Then run the following command to install it:

python get-pip.py

Installing QGIS#

autoMaps uses QGIS, a free and open source geographic information system, to generate maps. Get it on the QGIS downloads page and install it first. You probably should be familiar with QGIS and at least a little bit of PyQGIS to get most out of autoMaps. Check out the QGIS documentation, if necessary.

Installing autoMaps#

Install the automaps package from PyPI for the Python interpreter used by QGIS, for example like this:

/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install automaps

Info

If you are not sure, which Python interpreter is used by QGIS, open the QGIS GUI and run the following commands in the Python console: 

import sys
sys.executable

This may return something like /usr/bin/python3. Use the path to this Python interpreter in the command above.

Info

You may also install the automaps package into a Python virtual environment. This keeps your system Python nice and clean. As qgis cannot be installed via pip, you have to take an extra step to access this package from within the virtual environment: To tell the Python interpreter of your virtual environment, where the qgis package is located, you have to add a .pth file (e.g., qgis.pth) to its .../site-packages/ directory (see Python docs).

You can find out, which path you have to write into the file, by running:

<PATH_TO_YOUR_SYSTEM_PYTHON_INTERPRETER> -c "import qgis; print(qgis.__path__[0])"

e.g.

/usr/bin/python3 -c "import qgis; print(qgis.__path__[0])"

Assuming

  • this results in the path /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/qgis,
  • that your system Python interpreter is located under /usr/bin/python3,
  • and that you are using Python version 3.8,

the procedure to install automaps into a new virtual environment is as follows:

Create the virtual environment:

/usr/bin/python3 -m venv venv

Activate the virtual environment:

source venv/bin/activate

Install autoMaps:

pip install automaps

Create the .pth file:

echo "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages" > venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/qgis.pth

Info

If you are trying to install autoMaps on Windows, the method to find the Python interpreter described above may not work, as it yields only the path to the qgis.exe as a result. Try to locate a file called python-qgis.bat in the same directory as qgis.exe and use it to start the correct Python interpreter.