A week ago, based on a tip from Greg T, I build QGIS 4.0 on a NetBSD 10.1 system. It worked, after arranging the work-in-progress snapshot.
Peripherally, I got into gdal (for georeferenced PDFs), postgis (with PostgreSQL 18), and fence-posting of PGSQL 14 through 18 as allowed by the pkgsrc tools and all.
I put the problems first, instead of the splash screen showing the build worked; this showed it work-worked.
Splash - QGIS 4.0 starting banner, with an auth fail flag.
First is the fastest machine I have, compiling QGIS 3 followed by 4. A few hours each. Ish.
Sidebar in the future about single-threaded builds, as I have a collection of antique laptops that I've kept out of the hopper by installing BSD on them with new SSDs. 2 or 4 core, plus one "tower" that has a laptop-type board inside (HP made money doing that).
The glitch for using other than one PGSQL versions I found was the packaged build use 16 (as of this writing), but the pkgsrc make process allows one (and only one) of 14 through 18. For some reason I've got even number versions running, not on purpose, just the time I jumped into the pool for some app/reason.
A bigger test/build/test cycle is brewing, with the rough starting time after 2026 Q2 packages are distributed in a few weeks. Meanwhile I built 3.4.8 on a system with PostgreSQL 14 server. 18 to 24 hours on this box.
===> Extracting for qgis-3.44.8
=> Full dependency postgresql14-client>=14.17nb2: found postgresql14-client-14.23
I like this chart as Zabbix allows dashboards with arbitrary charts to go on the same page. Easier than trying to line up 2 Y-axes unless they are on the same scale (like classic 1/5/15 minute processor loads).
Issues above (and beyond)
- First encounter with an authorization message. Doesn't stop use, but it's unfamiliar territory.
- Building a current work-in-progress sub-tree broke apps on my main machine, maybe not the version 4.0.
- One core dump in the short time I ran 4.0.
- I had/have outdated pkgsrc trees, getting up to date with 2026 Q1 then Q2.
- Wishful thinking I could cross-build an aarch64 QGIS 4.0 as a Pi 4 may take as long to build as an old Intel (unsure)
- Geo-referenced PDF exports depend on the gdal library; Greg imported a change prior to freeze that I have yet to try.
- PostGIS works with version 18 now.
- The PKGSRC.se site has some new data, some old data on their pages. Images at the end. #ToDo
- The QGIS.org site shows build steps for FreeBSD and OpenBSD, not NetBSD. (Whom do I know?)
- pkg_admin version?
- The NetBSD wiki and pkgsrc docs could explain more how to/why to use a PGSQL version with QGIS or any other DB app.
- e.g
? Read the manual ?
https://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/pkgsrc.html
pgsql.buildlink3.mk will accept any of the Postgres versions in the variable PGSQL_VERSIONS_ACCEPTED and default to the version PGSQL_VERSION_DEFAULT. See the file for more information.
Explain default version "middle of the road" at a point in time for more users than other versions (subject to debate) not "most recent" version of PostreSQL.
https://pkgsrc.se/geography/qgis
Others in scope:
https://pkgsrc.se/geography/gdal-lib
https://pkgsrc.se/databases/py-psycopg2





