This documentation covers TileMill installation for developers. For most users, the installation instructions on the TileMill download page will be more appropriate.
Install the following dependencies first:
Install TileMill dependencies:
sudo apt-get install build-essential curl \
libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev libzip-dev libzip1
Add the mapnik2 nightly PPA and install mapnik2:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mapnik/nightly-trunk
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libmapnik2 libmapnik2-dev mapnik2-utils
Add the node.js dev PPA and install node and npm:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs nodejs-dev
sudo curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
Run the following from a terminal to check out a development copy of TileMill and build it from source.
git clone https://github.com/mapbox/tilemill.git
cd tilemill
npm install
Once the build is complete you can start TileMill with the following command from the tilemill
directory:
npm start
To update your development copy of TileMill clean your copy and rebuild:
# From the `tilemill` directory
git pull
rm -rf node_modules
npm install