After more than a year of development and 38 releases, I would like to give an update on the status of OSM Scout Server. The server is targeting mobile Linux devices as a drop-in replacement for online map services providing map tiles, search, and routing. As a result, an offline operation is possible if the device has a server and map client programs installed and running. Since its tailored towards mobile devices, the server has been successfully used on devices with as little as 1-2 GB of RAM.

At present, the server can be used to provide:

• vector or raster tiles for other applications;
• search for locations and free text search;
• search for POIs next to a reference area;
• calculating routes between given sequence of points.

User’s guide is available at https://rinigus.github.io/osmscout-server that describes how to set it up for Sailfish OS.

While started as a wrapper to libosmscout, it now incorporates several other backends:

• map rendering via Mapnik (https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik);
• hosting of Mapbox GL vector tiles (https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles);
• search via Geocoder-NLP (https://github.com/rinigus/geocoder-nlp) which is based on libpostal (https://github.com/openvenues/libpostal);
• routing instructions via Valhalla (https://github.com/valhalla/valhalla);
• map rendering, search, and routing via libosmscout (http://libosmscout.sourceforge.net/).

To use the server, you have to start it and configure the client to access it. With the help of the users, we have setup the distribution of maps in relevant formats that can be downloaded to your device. So, usage is rather simple: through server-provided GUI, users can select areas they are interested in, download, update, or remove them as needed. During the normal usage, server GUI is invisible and the server is started automatically via systemd-provided socket activation when user’s map client tries to access it. As a result, you have ability to use offline the map clients that are developed for online operation. It allows also to use the same offline maps in multiple applications, a strategy that has been successfully implemented by several applications in Sailfish OS.

Most, if not all users, are coming from Sailfish OS, but it should be relatively easy to adapt the server to any Linux. Already now it can be used from the command line, although the interface could use some adaptations to simplify management of the maps. However, taking into account that the server if written in Qt (C++ and QML), writing OS-specific GUI would probably require relatively small amount of time if done through QML.

I would like to announce an offline maps solution: OSM Scout Server.

Server based on libosmscout. This server is envisioned to be a drop-in replacement for online map services providing map tiles, search, and routing. As a result, an offline operation is possible if the device has a server and map client programs installed and running.

Platforms

Server is developed on mobile platform (Sailfish OS) and Linux. The server can be used as Sailfish application or running in console on regular Linux.

Functionality

At present, the server can be used to provide: * map tiles for other applications; * search for locations and free text search; * search for POIs next to a reference area.

By default, the server is configured to accept connections from localhost only, but you can change the configuration and serve it on LAN or even provide a globally accessible service, if you wish. The configuration of the server is simple, through a single INI file (Linux and Sailfish) or GUI interface (Sailfish).

Availability

License: LGPL Source code: https://github.com/rinigus/osmscout-server

To use the server, you have to start it and configure the client to access it. An example configurations for Poor Maps and modRana are provided under “thirdparty” folder (see Github source tree). At present, Poor Maps plugins cover functionality of the server fully. modRana can use the server to show the map with the other functionality expected in near future.

The current release is tailored towards map application developers and advanced users that are not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Main issues with using the server are:

• you have to convert OSM maps to libosmscout format on your PC
• you have to configure client programs to access the server.

For detailed up-to-date description, please see README

Acknowledgments

The server is just a small part in large amount of work that have been done on mapping solutions by many other developers.

The underlying library was originally developed by Tim Teulings (@Framstag) who is the principal developer right now as well. Lukáš Karas (@Karry) has been working actively on the development of this library and Sailfish application OSM Scout. The server relies on their and other libosmscout developers code to provide the service.

On the other side, the server allows us to use excellent map applications developed over time for Sailfish and Linux. Already in the early development stage, I was helped by Poor Maps and modRana developers Osmo Salomaa (@otsaloma) and Martin Kolman (@M4rtinK), respectively. Thank you! While developing server, I could not cover all possible client applications and limited myself to these two. I am sure that if the server would become popular, the other plugins would be developed as well.