[Gdal-dev] Frustration with MrSID and ECW

[Bill Binko]

Hi everyone,

I am tearing my hair out right now, trying to get GDAL to do the 
impossible: handle both ECW and MrSID in one GDAL installation (on Linux).

I would really like to get this working, as my sources of images use both, 
and I have no desire to work with uncompressed images (it would be quite a 
large dataset), nor to I want to uncompress and then re-compress them 
(MrSID->ECW, I suppose) as that would lose fidelity.

I have succeeded with this once in the past: I thought!  It turns out that 
when you throw one more variable at it (running PHP as an Apache2 module), 
it blows up.

At this point, I have been unable to get MrSID's latest SDK to build with
CVS HEAD with GCC 3.4.1 (regardless of ECW).  I have done this in the
past, and probably can again, but I'd really like some help from the two
vendors on this.

I know this is vendor-specific, and that neither of these libs are 
open-source, so I hate to ask Frank to spend his time debugging build 
issues and compatibility concerns.  However, I think it would benefit both 
LizardTech, and ERMapper to help fix the build issues (including MrSID's 
inability to build on GCC 3.4), and figure out how to play nice together.

The GDAL package is a Data Abstraction layer, and as such it makes using 
your libraries and formats very easy for those of us who don't want to 
learn 30 APIs.  Data abstraction layers are only useful when they have 
multiple back-ends, and right now, it is very difficult to get both ECW 
and MrSIDs working in the same install.

I have no corporate coffers to raid to offer cash for this support.  
However, I can offer my time and debugging efforts.  I am not a GIS expert 
by any means, but my debugging abilities are at least average, and I am 
very motivated to help.  I have also figured out GCC's library linking 
strategy and have succeeded in getting MrSIDs older libs to work on newer 
compilers.  

Anyway, I realize this is a bit of a whine, and I'm sorry about that, but 
I now have a real need for this, and it has been a long wait for a 
solution.  If there are others out there who are willing and able to help, 
I suppose it doesn't have to be ERMapper and LizardTech who help with 
this: drop me a note, and we'll have at it.

>From a grumpy, sleepy curmudgeon,

Bill