TileCache Under Windows… It Just Works ™
It’s cool when software works.
So, I needed to test the latest TileCache in Windows. I’ve got a relatively clean Windows laptop I keep around for this. None of the niceties that I would typically want on a machine I used full time — no Firefox, no cygwin, no vim, etc. Just a straight up Windows install, with things like Google Earth installed.
So, starting from that, I started by downloading Apache from the Apache Download Page. I downloaded “Win32 Binary (MSI Installer): apache_2.2.4-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi“, and ran the installer directly. This got http://localhost/ serving a page that says “It works!”.
Next, I downloaded the Python 2.5 Windows installer , and again selected all the defaults.
Next, I downloaded TileCache 1.4, as a .zip file, since I know how well Windows supports .tar.gz files. I extracted the zip file into C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\cgi-bin.
Lastly, I edited C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\cgi-bin\tilecache-1.4\tilecache.cgi so that the first line of the file read “#!C:/Python25/python.exe -u”, and visited http://localhost/cgi-bin/tilecache-1.4/tilecache.cgi/1.0.0/basic/0/0/0.png …
And it worked! I got an image. I never expected setting up Apache, Python, and TileCache to just… well… work.
March 8th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
I don’t suppose you could do the Windows solution again but using IIS ver. 6 and ASP ver.2.X. I can’t. The ReadMe file with TileCache seems flat wrong. The first link is to directions for older versions of IIS and skips crucial information for ver. 6. The second link to editing metabase.xml actually says you shouldn’t have to and that the IIS API for ver. 6 does it for you. I followed these directions to successfully setup Python CGI ( http://python.markrowsoft.com/tutorial/default.aspx ). Unfortunately, this is far as I get, no image, it just doesn’t… well… work. For a second Windows test, no pretending your not using windows, no apache – I would love to see the same step by step with a virtual directory in IIS ver. 6 and ASP 2.x. – WILL YOU ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE?
March 10th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I just tried it with TileCache 2.0 and the above still holds true – It Just Works. I wrote up my experiences here. Furthermore, I wrote a followup post that explains the few extra easy steps needed to get TC running under mod_python under Windows, here.