// the find
opengeos/GeoLibre
A lightweight, cloud-native GIS platform for visualizing, exploring, and analyzing geospatial data across desktop and web environments, with a responsive layout for mobile screens.
GeoLibre is a full-featured GIS desktop/web application built on Tauri, MapLibre GL JS, and DuckDB-WASM. It covers the entire workflow from loading vector/raster data through spatial SQL, styling, and export — all running primarily in the browser. Target audience is GIS analysts and data scientists who want something between QGIS and a web map viewer, without standing up a server.
DuckDB-WASM Spatial as the in-browser query engine is genuinely clever — you get real SQL with ST_* functions against loaded layers without a backend, and GeoParquet reads stream via HTTP range requests so large datasets don't blow up the tab. The three-engine fallback for vector tools (Turf.js in-browser → Pyodide → sidecar) means the tool always works, degrading gracefully based on what's available. The monorepo package split (core, map, plugins, processing, ui) is clean — plugins get a real API surface including access to the shared deck.gl instance, so external plugins aren't second-class citizens. The Python anywidget with two-way project sync is a practical bridge for Jupyter users who want to prototype in Python and hand off a shareable map.
Raster tools are sidecar-only with file paths in and out — from the web build you can't actually process a raster you uploaded, only ones mounted into the Docker container; this is called out in the docs but it's a real gap for anyone who isn't running the desktop app. The macOS install requires an `xattr` workaround because the app is ad-hoc signed but not notarized, which is going to confuse non-technical users who just want to open a .dmg. PMTiles and Whitebox toolbox are amd64-only in the container, so arm64 Macs running Docker get partial functionality with no clear error message in the UI. The feature list is enormous for a v1.2, which means the test surface is shallow — the e2e suite is three spec files covering smoke, PWA, and accessibility; anyone doing serious spatial analysis is likely to find edge cases in the less-exercised paths.