Finding a PostGIS package is only part of deciding whether a geospatial workload can run on Amazon Linux 2023. The input formats and spatial operations your application needs must also be available.

The GIS package restoration announced on October 22, 2026 provides a reason to revisit that decision. Following the new configuration through GDAL formats, library paths, and database features shows where the added SFCGAL support helps and where limitations remain.

Optional GDAL dependencies determine which formats return

The restored packages target PostgreSQL 14–18 on Amazon Linux 2023 for x86_64 and aarch64. The GIS stack had been withdrawn because some libraries used by GDAL were absent from the distribution; identifying those dependencies as belonging to optional drivers enabled its return. Package restoration announcement

GDAL format support depends on the libraries included in its build. Its official build documentation describes these optional dependencies. Making a build distributable with fewer dependencies therefore does not give it the same format coverage as a build for another operating system.

The AL2023 build retains formats including GeoTIFF, COG, and GeoPackage. It omits netCDF, HDF4/HDF5, FITS, LIBKML, XLS, GPSBabel, GMLAS, and Arrow/Parquet. The shapefile loader GUI, shp2pgsql-gui, is also absent because GTK 2 is unavailable. AL2023 build limitations

A GeoTIFF ingestion workflow is consequently a candidate for testing, whereas a workflow that reads netCDF directly through this GDAL build lacks a required driver. Inventorying input and output formats is a useful first step toward an adoption decision.

PostGIS uses libraries installed under separate prefixes

The PGDG libraries occupy separate paths: /usr/gdal313, /usr/geos315, and /usr/proj98. They coexist with the operating system libraries, and PostGIS finds its dependencies through rpath. Library layout

Checking the operating system library versions alone is therefore insufficient to establish the database configuration. Start inside a database with PostGIS enabled:

-- Read the PostGIS version and build configuration.
SELECT postgis_full_version();

PostGIS_Full_Version() reports version and build information, including information about library and SQL script synchronization. Keeping this output provides a baseline for comparing dependencies before and after an update.

SFCGAL support adds spatial operations that databases can enable

SFCGAL is a C++ library built around CGAL that provides advanced 2D and 3D spatial operations. Enable the postgis_sfcgal extension to use its functions in a database. SFCGAL function reference

For example, CG_Extrude extrudes a surface into a volume. It requires the SFCGAL backend and is available under that name from PostGIS 3.5.0. An SFCGAL-enabled build still needs to be checked against the names and minimum versions of the functions an application uses.

The restored PostGIS 3.3–3.7 builds include SFCGAL support. Ordinary installation pulls in SFCGAL-libs; users do not need to manually install the build dependencies CGAL-devel and nlohmann_json-devel merely to use PostGIS. PostGIS 3.7 was an RC at the time of the announcement. SFCGAL dependencies and supplied versions

Package support and database activation are separate steps. In a test database that already has PostGIS but has not enabled SFCGAL, a connection with the necessary privileges can run CREATE EXTENSION postgis_sfcgal;. This adds an extension to the database, so distinguish it from a read-only inspection query.

Raster availability depends on both the build and database settings

A packaged GDAL driver is not necessarily enabled for PostGIS. Standard PostGIS installations set postgis.gdal_enabled_drivers to DISABLE_ALL; this setting controls which drivers PostGIS may use. GDAL driver configuration

In a test database with postgis_raster enabled, these queries inspect the current setting and available raster formats without changing configuration:

-- Inspect the GDAL driver setting for this connection.
SHOW postgis.gdal_enabled_drivers;

-- Inspect available raster formats and read/write capabilities.
SELECT short_name, long_name, can_read, can_write
FROM ST_GDALDrivers()
ORDER BY short_name;

ST_GDALDrivers() covers raster formats. If it returns no entries, inspect the enablement setting; do not treat its results as an inventory of vector formats. Changing database settings cannot add a driver omitted from the build.

Adoption on AL2023 comes down to whether this configuration supplies the formats and operations your workload needs. Compare format requirements, inspect the libraries and settings actually used by the database, then test representative ingestion and spatial operations. That sequence turns restored package availability into a decision about your application.

Source

• Title: Devrim GÜNDÜZ: PostGIS is back on Amazon Linux 2023 (with SFCGAL this time)
• URL: https://postgr.es/p/9zE