Installing ECW for QGIS in Ubuntu 12.04?

Question

I have followed various online help guides on how to make ecw for QGIS 1.8 work in Ubuntu 12.04. I had it all working in Ubuntu 10.04 but since migration to 12.04 no such luck.

Is there a guide that works for Ubuntu 12.04?

At the moment it seems easier to install the windows version where ecw support is included in the install, but I would like to stay with Ubuntu.

Answer 1

ECW libraries are not open source software and cannot be freely distributed. You need to add manually the ecw support in your local copy of gdal. On ubuntu do this:

wget http://de-mirror.org/distro/gentoo/distfiles/libecwj2-3.3-2006-09-06.zip
unzip libecwj2-3.3-2006-09-06.zip
cd libecwj2-3.3
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo gdal-ecw-build /usr/local/ 
sudo ldconfig

Answer 2

The Intergraph ECW JPEG2000 SDK v5.0 has been released and includes linux support. The ubuntugis-unstable ppa has been updated to include SDK v5.0 support in libgdal-ecw-src.

Notes:

• As at 27 July 2013 build fails on 32bit Ubuntu
• ECW/JP2ECW drivers fail using Python bindings, gdal executables work fine.
• This SDK is licensed for Desktop use only and has been reported to fail if attempting to use it in a Server application.

To get the ECW JPEG2000 SDK v5.0 working in ubuntu 12.04 - 13.04 64bit:

• update (or install) libgdal-ecw-src from the UbuntuGIS Unstable PPA
• download the SDK installer (ERDAS_ECWJP2_SDK-5.0.bin)
• make it executable (chmod +x ERDAS_ECWJP2_SDK-5.0.bin)
• run it (./ERDAS_ECWJP2_SDK-5.0.bin)
• copy the SDK directory to /usr/local (sudo cp -r ecwjp2_sdk /usr/local/)
• symlink libNCSEcw.so to /usr/local/lib (sudo ln -s /usr/local/ecwjp2_sdk/lib/x64/release/libNCSEcw.so /usr/local/lib/libNCSEcw.so)
• update ldconfig (sudo ldconfig)
• run the gdal-ecw-build script (sudo gdal-ecw-build /usr/local/ecwjp2_sdk)

• test it works:

  gdalinfo --formats | grep -i ecw

  ECW (rw+): ERDAS Compressed Wavelets (SDK 5.0)

  JP2ECW (rw+v): ERDAS JPEG2000 (SDK 5.0)

Answer 3

The how-to linked here is the only one that worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04 32bit and the latest version of QGIS.

Here I reproduce the steps, with the corresponding adjustments:

1. Go to http://download.intergraph.com/ and select "ECW Products" from the drop-down list under "Product Family:".
2. Click on "ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK v5.3 (Linux)" (version 5.3 available from 2016-06-14) and then click on "Download Now"
3. You have to register with the website.
4. Unzip the downloaded file, e.g.:

unzip erdas-ecw-sdk-5.3.0-linux.zip 

5. Make the unzipped binary executable:

chmod +x ERDAS_ECWJP2_SDK-5.3.0.bin 

6. Execute the program; select option "Desktop read-only"

./ERDAS_ECWJP2_SDK-5.3.0.bin

7. Now copy the ERDAS_ECWJP2_SDK-5.3.0 folder to /usr/local:

sudo cp -r ERDAS-ECW_JPEG_2000_SDK-5.2.1 /usr/local/

8. Locate libNCSEcw.so and create a symbolic ("soft") link to it. Use folder x86 or x64 according to your system:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/ERDAS-ECW_JPEG_2000_SDK-5.2.1/Desktop_Read-Only/lib/x86/release/libNCSEcw.so /usr/local/lib/libNCSEcw.so

9. Now run the following commands (update dynamic links, install ECW GDAL extension and run it):

sudo ldconfig
sudo apt-get install libgdal-ecw-src
sudo gdal-ecw-build /usr/local/ERDAS-ECW_JPEG_2000_SDK-5.2.1/Desktop_Read-Only

10. Confirm that everything worked:

gdalinfo --formats | grep -i ecw

You should get something like

    ECW (rw+): ERDAS Compressed Wavelets (SDK 5.3)
    JP2ECW (rw+v): ERDAS JPEG2000 (SDK 5.3)

11. Now you can run QGIS to import ECW files on a raster layer.

Very soon I should be able to report how it worked on Ubuntu 16.04 64bit, but please comment or edit this answer if you did it already.