Installing Mapnik in Windows

Mapnik binaries can be installed and configured manually on windows. See http://mapnik.org/pages/downloads.html for the latest download and instructions on installing.

If you are interested in installing Mapnik on other operating systems see Mapnik-Installation

If you are interested in compiling Mapnik from source on windows see the windows scripts at https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik-packaging

Supported Features

The Windows builds have a slightly less complete feature set than is possible from source builds. Full support is planned, and this table tracks the versions in which new features are added:

Mapnik Feature	0.5.0	0.5.1	0.6.0	0.6.1	0.7.0	0.7.1	2.2.0
Cairo Rendering	-	-	-	-	-	-	***
ICU Unicode Support	-	-	***	***	***	***	***
Python 2.5 Support	***	***	***	***	***	***	-
Python 2.6 Support	-	-	-	-	***	***	-
Python 2.7 Support	-	-	-	-	***	***	***
Libxml2 Parser Support	-	-	-	***	***	***	***
Shapefile Plugin	***	***	***	***	***	***	***
Raster Plugin	***	***	***	***	***	***	***
PostGIS Plugin	***	***	***	***	***	***	***
GDAL Plugin	-	-	***	***	***	***	***
OGR Plugin	-	-	-	***	***	***	***
SQLite Plugin	-	-	***	***	***	***	***
GeoJSON Plugin	-	-	-	-	-	-	***
CSVJSON Plugin	-	-	-	-	-	-	***
OSM Plugin	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
shapeindex.exe	-	***	***	***	***	***	***
pgsql2sqlite.exe	-	-	***	***	***	***	***

- : not available
***: available
Note: as of Mapnik 0.6.1 memory-mapped files are disabled in the Shapefile Plugin in windows builds (see #342)

Overview

This Guide will walk you through installing Mapnik and then running a test script to generate the sample map below:

Manual Instructions

Step 1: Download the Mapnik binary

Get the latest Windows binaries at http://mapnik.org/pages/downloads.html

Step 2: Unzip and place Mapnik

Place the unzipped folder into C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\

Step 3: Set your system and/or users environment variables:

Do this at Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environment Variables

Add ;C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\lib; to the PATH variable.
Note: The ; characters are separators so add them before or after other entries that may be in your PATH variable. If you are only adding C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\lib (and your PATH has not been modified/added to yet then technically you can leave out the ; until you add more entries.
Note: you may also need to set your user path environment variable.
Note: Adding ;C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\bin; to the PATH variable is for the following commands:
mapnik-config, pgsql2sqlite, shapeindex, svg2png, upgrade_map_xml
If the variable PATH is not already present, add it.
Setting this correctly allows the Mapnik python bindings to find the mapnik.dll
for PYTHON support add:
PYTHON 2.7: ;C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\python\2.7\site-packages; to the PYTHONPATH variable.
Setting this correctly allows Python to find the Mapnik python bindings when you do >>> import mapnik

Step 4: Ensure PATH variables are correct

Open a new console by running "cmd" to test settings.
Type "path" to make sure your PATH contains C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\lib

Step 5: Test python import

Run C:\Python27\python.exe
Then type at a python prompt:

import mapnik

If you get no error message, you made it!
If you do get an error message, see Troubleshooting below

Step 6: Test demo program

Open explorer, go to C:\mapnik-v2.2.0\demo\python
Double click rundemo.py
You should see several demo.* files output.

Step 7: Learn more

Head over to GettingStarted for your first tutorial on the Mapnik Python API.

Trouble Shooting

Mapnik DLL not found

You get an error like:

Can't find mapnik.dll

Solution: make sure that you complete Step 3.a properly.

Mapnik Python not found

Problem: When importing mapnik in python you get:

    >>> import mapnik
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    ImportError: No module named mapnik

Solution: make sure that you have put the site-packages folder on your PYTHONPATH by completing Step 3.b.

Problem: When importing mapnik in python you get:

ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.

One possible reason is an libxml2 conflict. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7576751/installing-mapnik-on-windows-xp-fails-with-the-message-importerror-dll-load-fa for details on how to workaround and follow https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik-packaging/issues/109.

Unknown (Windows) Dependency not found

Problem: When importing mapnik in python you get:

    >>> import mapnik
    [...snip...]
    from _mapnik import *
    ImportError: DLL load failed: This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Solution:

You may need to install the 2010 Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (vcredist.exe) from the Microsoft.
You can get more information on what is missing or incompatible by examining mapnik.dll with Dependency Walker. On a 64bit system you must use the 32bit Version.