Mapserver
MapServer is for building Web-based GIS applications.
What can I do with MapServer? It can act as a WMS. It can act as a WFS.
What is a WMS? An OGC-compliant "Web Map Server"
What is a WFS? An OGC-compliant "Web Feature Server" allows WFS clients to access feature sets from the WFS instead of entire maps.
You can combine it with other components to enhance its functionality. This page documents my set up at http://mapserver.seafloor.org/
Installation
The INSTALL file has this text in it: "Visit http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ for full documentation and installation instructions." It took me a good 30 minutes to find any useful documentation at the UMN site!
Look in their MapServerWiki. Here is a doc on MapServerCompilation
Components
Web application API
I build a special Web server to run MapServer for two reasons. First, I generally run MySQL not PostgreSQL due to the requirements of other packages that I use. I might think PostgreSQL is better than MySQL but the other packages don't support it.
Second, the current version of MapServer requires that PHP be run as a CGI instead of as a loadable Apache module. For MapServer this is not a big deal but again some of my other software packages won't work when used with the CGI version of PHP.
So I build a special version of PHP 4.3.9 and run it on a dedicated Linux / Apache server.
GD 2.0.27 Boutell's graphics library (The version with Redhat 1.8.4 is too old. Remove it.) Apache Web server 2.0.51
(Newer versions are available for both Apache and PHP but these work for me.)
Projections
PROJ 4.4.8 installed from RPM for Redhat.
This package offers commandline tools and a library for performing respective forward and inverse transformation of cartographic data to or from cartesian data with a wide range of selectable projection functions.
Raster support
GDAL 1.2.3
GDAL is the "Geospatial Data Abstraction Library".
GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats.
I built it with './configure; make'.
Vector support
OGR The OGR library is a subcomponent of GDAL so you don't need to worry about it if you install GDAL. The OGR Simple Features Library allows MapServer users to display several types of vector data files in their native formats. For example, MapInfo Mid/Mif and TAB data do not need to be converted to ESRI shapefiles when using OGR support with MapServer.
PostGIS
PostgreSQL 7.4.5-2 installed from RPMs for RH-9
