Mabox Outdoors custom style with Mapnik

Question

I am trying to set up a tile server with Mapnik, renderd, mod_tile and with MapBox Outdoors style. I've been able to successfully go through https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/manually-building-a-tile-server-14-04/ tutorial and set up the server with OSM-Bright style.

Next I changed renderd.conf file and pointed the 'XML' property the 'project.xml' file from MapBox Outdoors style which I previously downloaded from Github. I've also cleared the cache, restarted renderd and apache but the new style does not work - there are only empty tiles rendered.

Is there something that I'm doing wrong? What is the proper way to apply Outdoors style?

Answer 1

The Mapbox Outdoors style is not compatible with the OSM Bright process described by switch2osm. It is designed to be uploaded to a Mapbox account, not to be used with a custom mod_tile setup. The style as-is relies on data in the form of vector tiles served from the Mapbox API (which requires an account / API key and is subject to certain conditions).

It would be possible to modify the source code to work with a custom database for you to use it in your own tile server setup, but you would need to make sure your layer definitions are compatible with the descriptions at https://www.mapbox.com/developers/vector-tiles/mapbox-streets/ and https://www.mapbox.com/developers/vector-tiles/mapbox-terrain/.