OSMIUM(1)

📦
version 1.19.1 · 6 versions
, in fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu stonking

🌸 OSMIUM — the manual page, but make it a group chat 🌸

okay bestie, gather round, because osmium is that girl. it's the multipurpose tool for working with OpenStreetMap data, and honestly? she does it all. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

osmium — multipurpose tool for working with OpenStreetMap data. no cap.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

osmium COMMAND [ARG...]
osmium --version

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Multipurpose tool for working with OpenStreetMap data. she's versatile, she's iconic, she's doing the most. 👑

Run osmium help COMMAND to get more information about a command. > heads up bestie: this will only work on Linux and macOS systems, and only if the man command is available and working correctly. so if it's giving nothing, check your setup first. 😭

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -h, --help — show usage and list of commands. the "what can u even do" button.
  • --version — show program version. proof of identity, slay.

✨ COMMANDS ✨

okay here's the whole roster, every single one, no skipping. they all ate. 🍓

  • add-locations-to-ways — add node locations to ways in OSM file
  • apply-changes — apply OSM change file(s) to OSM data file
  • cat — concatenate OSM files and convert to different formats
  • changeset-filter — filter changesets from OSM changeset files
  • check-refs — check referential integrity of OSM file
  • derive-changes — create OSM change file from two OSM files
  • diff — display differences between OSM files
  • export — export OSM data
  • extract — create geographical extracts from an OSM file
  • fileinfo — show information about an OSM file
  • getid — get objects from OSM file by ID
  • getparents — get parents of objects from OSM file
  • help — show help about commands
  • merge — merge several OSM files into one
  • merge-changes — merge several OSM change files into one
  • removeid — remove OSM objects with specified IDs
  • renumber — renumber object IDs
  • show — show OSM file
  • sort — sort OSM files
  • tags-filter — filter OSM data based on tags
  • time-filter — filter OSM data by time from a history file

✨ COMMON OPTIONS ✨

most commands support these cuties:

  • -h, --help — show short usage information.
  • -v, --verbose — set verbose mode. the program will output information about what it is doing to STDERR. it's basically the gossip channel. 🫶

✨ MEMORY USAGE ✨

Osmium commands try to do their work as memory efficient as possible. but bestie, be real — some osmium commands still need to load quite a bit of data into main memory. 😭 in some cases this means that only smaller datasets can be handled. go look into the man pages for the individual commands to learn more about their memory use. iykyk.

On most commands, if you use the --verbose/-v option, osmium will print out the peak memory usage at the end. this is the actual amount of memory used, including the program code itself, any needed libraries, and the data. (printing of memory usage is currently only available on Linux systems. sorry to the mac girlies. 💀)

If an osmium command exits with an "Out of memory" error, try running it with --verbose/-v on smaller datasets to get an idea how much memory it needs. that's the vibe check you need.

On Linux a program that uses a lot of memory can be killed by the kernel without the program being notified. so if you see osmium dying without any apparent reason, this might be the case. 😱 search on the Internet for "OOM killer" to find out more about this.

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

Copyright (C) 2013-2026 Jochen Topf <jochen@topf.org>.

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. 🫶

✨ CONTACT ✨

If you have any questions or want to report a bug, please go to https://osmcode.org/contact.html

✨ AUTHORS ✨

Jochen Topf <jochen@topf.org>. the main character, honestly. 💖

and that's the whole page, bestie!! version 1.19.1 of the OSMIUM(1) manual, delivered with love, zero skipped details, and maximum main character energy. go forth and process some OpenStreetMap data. periodt. 💅✨🎀🦋

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