GPSBabel is distributed "ready to run" on most common operating systems via the download page.
As GPSBabel runs on a wide variety of operating systems, be sure to visit the OS-Specific notes for additional information.
For operating systems where no binary is provided or if you want the latest development version, you will have to build it from source. The code should be compilable on any system with ISO C89 compilers. It's been tested on UnixWare, OpenServer, OS/X, Linux, Solaris, and a variety of processors and compilers.
In most cases, the code is as simple to build as running:
./configure && make
Expat is strongly recommended for source builds as it is required for reading all the XML formats such as GPX. Fedora users may need to 'yum install expat-devel'. Ubutnu users may need to 'apt-get install expat libexpat-dev'.
libusb is recommended for OS/X and Linux if you want to use a USB Garmin. Fedora users may need to 'yum install expat-devel'. Ubutnu users may need to 'apt-get install libusb-dev'.
There are additional flags that can be passed to configure to customize your build of GPSBabel.
./configure --help
lists all the supported options, but additionally we have:
--disable-shapefile
Excludes the shapefile support.
--disable-pdb
Excludes the Palm database support and all formats that rely on it.
--disable-csv
Excludes all support for our something-separated formats.
--disable-filters
Excludes all filter support.
--enable-efence
Activate debugging mode for gpsbabel-debug.
--with-doc=dir
Specify that the doc should be created and installed in dir
.
--without-libusb
Disables use of libusb, even it's it's available.
--with-zlib=(included)|system|no
By default, we use our own version of zlib. If you specify system
the system zlib is used. A value of no
(or --without-zlib) disables zlib.