We've been self-hosting protomaps (aka pmtiles) for several years. The only thing you need server-side is a web server that can serve static files and supports range requests (so anything works; I've tried caddy and nginx). The map is one large file, it's easy to share it between however many servers you need.
Downsides? Nothing major that I can think of. You have to add another client-side dependency (support for their custom protocol); the library is pretty small and easy to audit.
Editing map styles is slightly more difficult because generic maplibre styles won't work with it: they add a bit of custom sauce on top. IIRC this editor worked fine, you can import one of protomaps styles and base your work off it:
No, the names are there in the file, streets included. Their default styles did not support the languages we needed out of the box (everything was shown in the local language or English IIRC), but it was easy to fix by patching the style. I don't remember the exact fix, but it was about as simple as replacing something like `["get", "name_en"]` with `["get", ["coalesce", "name_xx", "name_en"]]`.
I do. The pros are hosting own data and have total control over stack and cloud hosting. The cons are having to code your own stack and do cloud management. I use PostGis to storage and serve vector tiles. And I use a simple backend with AWS S3 to store and serve raster data (GeoTiff COG).
Respect this commitment. I think to be honest I'd only ever consider hosting a tile server if I was actually rendering data on the tiles or there was something 'special' about them (e.g style). Using $whatever hosted tiles are likely to be faster for the user as they'll be cached, served statically.
In short: We have a script that builds a pbf of the area we are interested in (Colorado, USA) from OSM, then set up a openstreetmap-tile-server container with that data, bring in our styles, and then set up renderd.
We've been self-hosting protomaps (aka pmtiles) for several years. The only thing you need server-side is a web server that can serve static files and supports range requests (so anything works; I've tried caddy and nginx). The map is one large file, it's easy to share it between however many servers you need.
https://docs.protomaps.com/guide/getting-started
Downsides? Nothing major that I can think of. You have to add another client-side dependency (support for their custom protocol); the library is pretty small and easy to audit.
Editing map styles is slightly more difficult because generic maplibre styles won't work with it: they add a bit of custom sauce on top. IIRC this editor worked fine, you can import one of protomaps styles and base your work off it:
https://maputnik.github.io/editor
That's probably it.
How do you update pmiles? Do you have to rebuild the entire map every time? If so, I think that's a downside/limitation for some use cases.
Are the names of cities/streets included in the tiles, or do they have to be placed from a different data source?
No, the names are there in the file, streets included. Their default styles did not support the languages we needed out of the box (everything was shown in the local language or English IIRC), but it was easy to fix by patching the style. I don't remember the exact fix, but it was about as simple as replacing something like `["get", "name_en"]` with `["get", ["coalesce", "name_xx", "name_en"]]`.
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I do. The pros are hosting own data and have total control over stack and cloud hosting. The cons are having to code your own stack and do cloud management. I use PostGis to storage and serve vector tiles. And I use a simple backend with AWS S3 to store and serve raster data (GeoTiff COG).
Respect this commitment. I think to be honest I'd only ever consider hosting a tile server if I was actually rendering data on the tiles or there was something 'special' about them (e.g style). Using $whatever hosted tiles are likely to be faster for the user as they'll be cached, served statically.
We use mod_tile+renderd: https://github.com/openstreetmap/mod_tile
In short: We have a script that builds a pbf of the area we are interested in (Colorado, USA) from OSM, then set up a openstreetmap-tile-server container with that data, bring in our styles, and then set up renderd.