REQUIREMENTS to compile GRASS GIS 8

A workstation running some flavor of UNIX including GNU/Linux, Solaris, IRIX, BSD, Mac OSX, Cygwin or MinGW (on Win32/Win64). Ideally, you should have at least 800 MB of free disk space. The source code package needs disk space of around 26 MB compressed and 440MB uncompressed. The resulting binaries may need between 20 MB and 180 MB depending on your platform and compiler flags. During a full compilation you may need temporarily up to 550MB including the source code.

To enable and disable features please read the INSTALL file.

General requirements:

(most tools are standard tools on GNU/Linux, for other platforms you may have to install some of them.)

C-compiler (cc, gcc, egcs, ...)
gcc: https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html
GNU make is recommended (at least version 3.81)
https://www.gnu.org/software/make/make.html
zlib compression library (already installed on most modern systems)
It is used to internally compress GRASS raster maps.
libz: https://www.zlib.net
flex lexical analyzer generator (flex)
Note: lex is no longer supported, please use flex instead.
flex: https://github.com/westes/flex
parser generator (yacc, bison)
bison: https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/bison.html
PROJ - Cartographic Projection Library
https://proj.org/
GDAL/OGR for import and export of most external raster and vector map formats
https://gdal.org
Python >= 3.6 (for temporal framework, scripts, wxGUI, and ctypes interface)
https://www.python.org

Optional packages:

Note: also the respective development packages (commonly named xxx-dev or xxx-devel) need to be installed.

C++ Compiler (required for the various C++ GRASS module)
gcc: https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html
bzip2, needed for raster compression with bzip2
https://www.bzip.org
zstd (Zstandard), needed for raster compression with zstd
https://facebook.github.io/zstd
FFTW 2.x or 3.x (library for computing the Discrete Fourier Transform), required for i.fft and i.ifft and other modules
http://www.fftw.org
GEOS (Geometry Engine library), needed for v.buffer and adds extended options to the v.select module
https://trac.osgeo.org/geos
LAPACK / BLAS (libraries for numerical computing) for GMATH library (GRASS Numerical Library)
https://www.netlib.org/lapack (usually available on Linux distros)
Note: LAPACK/BLAS support is at time only needed for selected Addons
NetCDF (for 3D raster netcdf export)
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/
If hardware openGL support is missing in the X Server, Mesa-3.x (openGL clone) may be required for wxNVIZ
https://mesa3d.org/
libpng (for r.out.png and the PNG driver), usually already installed.
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
libtiff (for r.out.tiff), usually already installed.
https://gitlab.com/libtiff/libtiff
readline for extra command prompt functionality
https://tiswww.case.edu/~chet/readline/rltop.html
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline
PostgreSQL libraries (for the PostgreSQL database interface and PostGIS support)
https://www.postgresql.org
MariaDB/MySQL libraries (for the MySQL database interface)
https://mariadb.org/
SQLite libraries (for the SQLite database interface)
https://www.sqlite.org
unixODBC (for the ODBC database interface)
http://www.unixodbc.org
R Statistics (for the R statistical language interface)
https://cran.r-project.org
FreeType2 (for TrueType font support and d.text.freetype)
https://www.freetype.org/
Ctypes (for ctypes interface)
Ctypes can be added as a third-party module in Python 2.3 and 2.4 - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ctypes/1.0.2
https://docs.python.org/library/ctypes.html
wxPython >= 2.8.10.1 (for wxGUI)
https://www.wxpython.org
NumPy >= 1.0.4 (for various wxGUI components and pyGRASS)
https://numpy.org
Python dateutil Library ("python-dateutil", needed for the tgrass modules t.*)
https://labix.org/python-dateutil
Python PLY Library (Python Lex-Yacc) ("python-ply", needed for the temporal algebra in tgis)
https://www.dabeaz.com/ply
Python Imaging Library or PILLOW (highly recommended for wxGUI and necessary for wxGUI Cartographic Composer)
https://www.pythonware.com/products/pil, newer versions are named "python-pillow"
Python matplotlib > 1.2 ("python-matplotlib", needed for the several wxGUI tools)
https://matplotlib.org/
Python six Library ("python-six", needed for Python API)
https://github.com/benjaminp/six
Python wxPython backend for python-matplotlib ("python-matplotlib-wx", needed for e.g. g.gui.timeline)
https://matplotlib.org/
python-termcolor (recommended for g.search.modules)
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/termcolor
six (needed for cross-version Python compatibility)
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/six
FFMPEG or alternative (for wxGUI Animation tool - g.gui.module), specifically ffmpeg tool
https://ffmpeg.org
mpeg_encode or ppmtompeg tool (for r.out.mpeg module)
https://ffmpeg.org
Cairo >= 1.5.8 (for Cairo driver)
https://cairographics.org
AVCE00 and E00Compr Libraries (avcimport)
https://avce00.maptools.org
git (git for g.extension)
https://git-scm.com/
Subversion (svn in g.extension to fetch code selectively from grass-addons on GitHub)
https://subversion.apache.org/

Note:

SUN Solaris users may go here to download precompiled libraries etc.:
https://www.sunfreeware.com

SGI IRIX users may go here to download precompiled libraries etc.:
https://freeware.sgi.com

MacOSX users may go here to download precompiled libraries etc.:
https://fink.sourceforge.net

Please report bugs here:
https://grass.osgeo.org/contribute/