Documentation / TileMill

Building from source

This documentation covers TileMill installation for developers. For most users, the installation instructions on the TileMill download page will be more appropriate.

Install dependencies

Mac OS X

Install the following dependencies first:

Ubuntu Linux

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

Building TileMill

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

Updating

To update your development copy of TileMill clean your copy and rebuild:

# From the `tilemill` directory
git pull
rm -rf node_modules
npm install