[OSM-talk] rendering with mapnik, what do I need?

[Jon Burgess]

On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 22:21 +0000, Gervase Markham wrote:
> >>> 2. What do I need? PostgreSQL? Python? What else?
> >> See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mapnik
> > It's rather short. Is it really that simple...? 
> 
> I'm surprised by that reaction... I just read the Mapnik page and 
> thought "that's flipping complicated".
> 
> Mapnik itself, judging by http://www.mapnik.org/, seems to regard the 
> whole PosgreSQL thing as optional. Is there any way of getting OSM data 
> into a format Mapnik will render without having to set up a database?

You could try: 
https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/mapnik-devel/2008-February/000514.html

... but the Postgres based approach has been used by the main OSM site
for over a year so it it pretty well tested and understood. The link
above is new code which was only announced 3 days ago.

Postgres is quite easy to work with once you've gone through the pain of
setting it up the first time. For example, to import the new data each
week you just run: osm2pgsql planet-latest.osm.bz2

	Jon