Compiling Rasterlite2 for MacOS

If you need raster imagery support for GeoPackages, you can add the Rasterlite2 extension, in the same way you added the Spatialite extension. However, as of the end of February 2026, you may find that the Homebrew version of Rasterlite2 now generates an error. The solution to this problem, is, unfortunately, to compile Rasterlite2 yourself.

These instructions, while for MacOS, are also broadly applicable to all platforms, although you probably won’t have to edit the C++ source code in that instance.

Prequisites

You will need to install all the prerequisites for compilation, including, but not necessarily limited to, the dependencies for librasterlite2. They are listed below for convenience, but the information in the link should be considered canonical if there is a difference.

1 Download prerequisites

Install the items below using brew install.

Paakage name	description
cairo	Vector graphics library with cross-device output support
fontconfig	XML-based font configuration API for X Windows
freetype	Software library to render fonts
freexl	Library to extract data from Excel .xls files
geos	Geometry Engine
giflib	Library and utilities for processing GIFs
jpeg-turbo	JPEG image codec that aids compression and decompression
libgeotiff	Library and tools for dealing with GeoTIFF
libpng	Library for manipulating PNG images
librttopo	RT Topology Library
libspatialite	Adds spatial SQL capabilities to SQLite
libtiff	TIFF library and utilities
libxml2	GNOME XML library
lz4	Extremely Fast Compression algorithm
minizip	C library for zip/unzip via zLib
openjpeg	Library for JPEG-2000 image manipulation
pixman	Low-level library for pixel manipulation
proj	Cartographic Projections Library
sqlite	Command-line interface for SQLite
webp	Image format providing lossless and lossy compression for web images
xz	General-purpose data compression with high compression ratio
zstd	Zstandard is a real-time compression algorithm
pkgconf	Package compiler and linker metadata toolkit

There may be even more prerequisites; if you have compilation errors you will see what they are. The yak must be shaved.

2 Download the code

You can obtain the librasterlite2 source code from https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/librasterlite2/. Download and uncompress it somewhere convenient.

3 Edit the source code

Locate the file called rasterlite2_private.h, which should be found in the headers directory. Open it in a text editor. Scroll past the licence text and look for a line reading #include "config.h". If you’re using vim, this should get you very near the correct place.

vim headers/rasterlite2_private.h +49

Add this line somewhere before the ifdef statement:

#include <time.h>

Save and close the file.

4 Set up the build environment

Open a terminal and move to the folder where you unzipped the source code (ie, the top level where the config file and README live.

To ensure correct compilation, copy the following into your shell:

export CC="/usr/bin/clang -m64"
export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/homebrew/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/include"

You may not need to use the clang compiler.

5 Compile

The step we’ve all been waiting for.

Firstly: ./configure

This may take a while. Ideally it will succeed for you on the first run, but if it does not, you may need to install extra libraries to ensure successful compilation. This is left as an exercise for the reader. Assuming this step is successful, secondly:

make

If this step finishes, you have succcessfully compiled librasterlite2. You may note that you see nothing different. At this stage you can:

• make install. This will copy your compiled versions to (probably) /usr/local/ There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this, and you can do so if you wish. You will need to poke around /usr/local (or perhaps opt) to find out where mod_rasterlite2.1.so lives.

• The compiled files are in src/.libs, which is a hidden directory. You can copy the .dylib and .so files to whatever directory is convenient for you.

6 Enable the extension

In the same way you enabled Spatialite, in the extensions manager in DB Browser for SQLite, select and enable the mod_rasterlite2.1.so (or whichever version is now current, 2.1 as of this writing).

7 Ensure it works

Load up a database, and in the SQL editor try this query:

SELECT RL2_Version();

You should see output showing you which version of Rasterlite2 has been (successfully) installed.