[gdal-dev] GDAL 1.5+ and MrSID

[Nidel, Mike]

Sorry if this is a bit long and jumbled for a first post.

I'm trying to get MrSID read access from Java. I'm starting from the
imageio-ext project (http://imageio-ext.dev.java.net), which at the
moment relies on GDAL 1.4.4. Meanwhile, GDAL 1.4.4 only supports MrSID
SDK 6.0. 

When trying to build GDAL 1.4.4 with MrSID 6.0, I got the following:

> In file included from
> /home/mnidel/Geo_DSDK-6.0.7.1407/include/support/lt_types.h:28,
>                 from mrsiddataset.cpp:50:
> /home/mnidel/Geo_DSDK-6.0.7.1407/include/support/lt_platform.h:181:8:
> #error PLATFORM ERROR: LINUX, but unknown architecture
> /home/mnidel/Geo_DSDK-6.0.7.1407/include/support/lt_platform.h:206:5:
> #error PLATFORM ERROR: unknown architecture
> make[2]: *** [../o/mrsiddataset.o] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mnidel/gdal-1.4.4/frmts/mrsid'
> make[1]: *** [mrsid-install-obj] Error 2
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mnidel/gdal-1.4.4/frmts'
> make: *** [frmts-target] Error 2


This is on SuSE Linux on x68_64, it seems like somehow the "i386" define
wasn't happening. We guessed that this might be a problem with 64-bit
not being supported by MrSID 6.0. So I decided to take the leap and
build a newer version of GDAL with MrSID 7.0, then see if I could get
the imageio-ext java libraries to work with the newer GDAL.

I've been following a few of the threads online regarding building GDAL
on MrSID 7.0, and the various issues that have cropped up. It seems like
the latest revisions to get MrSID 7 working with 1.5+ are in the 1.5
branch, but not in any tag (e.g. 1.5.2, the latest 1.5.x I saw). So one
question is, is there any plan to release a 1.5.3 soon, with support for
MrSID 7.0?

But my primary reason for writing was to pass on my experience with
libjpeg.la. I got a compile error when trying to build off the 1.5
branch. It's the same as mentioned here:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2006-May/008975.html

the error:

>/usr/bin/sed: can't read /usr/lib/libjpg.la: No such file or directory
>libtool: link: '/usr/lib/libjpg.la' is not a valid libtool archive
>make[1]: *** [libgdal.la] Error 1

In that thread, the person downloaded libjpeg-devel and installed it to
get the libjpeg.la file. However, I downloaded the latest libjpeg-devel
for SuSE and it didn't contain libjpeg.la. After trying to steal this
file from another distribution and having it not work anyway, I started
to think maybe this was a problem with how libtool was being invoked.

After more Googling, I came upon a mostly-unrelated mention of the
--without-libtool option, so I re-ran

./configure --with-mrsid=/mrsidpath --without-libtool

and at this point, the build finally worked and the errors with
libjpeg.la disappeared.

So my reason for posting is to ask: Has anyone else seen this problem,
and if so has anyone else solved it in this way or in another way? Does
anyone have a theory why the --without-libtool option works? It was a
shot in the dark, so I'm really not sure what could have been wrong with
libtool, although I did notice that libtool is bundled with gdal, but
since /usr/bin/libtool appears first on my path, running "which libtool"
returns /usr/bin/libtool.

I haven't dug into the build deeply enough to know which libtool is
getting called, whether perhaps running make is calling gdal's libtool
explicitly. Maybe the answer is just to change my path...?

Any thoughts? Thanks for your patience with a first-time poster.


Mike