[gdal-dev] lib questions

[Nidel, Mike]

Thanks for the reply, Frank.


> > 1. What is libgdalconstjni.so? I've been building and using the JNI 
> > interfaces and just blindly including this file, but I 
> can't determine 
> > what this is and whether I need it. Sorry if this is a stupid 
> > question, I couldn't find the answer in any of the build docs.
> 
> Mike,
> 
> In theory this contains a bunch of constant defines for GDAL, 
> stuff like "gdal.GA_ReadOnly".  In practice I do not know if 
> this resolves to actual code in Java or not.


OK. After emailing, I tried running my app without it and it failed,
not with the normal UnsatisfiedLinkError on the library, but with
a more specific error that included the name of the symbol that it
was trying to look up (presumably a global variable in gdalconst).

I just wanted to make sure I needed it, and try to understand why,
thanks.


> > 2. Is there a reason why on linux the build creates a libgdal.so 
> > whereas on Windows it's gdalXX.dll, i.e. the version number is 
> > inserted in the name? I would think you'd want to be 
> consistent across platforms there.
> 
> On linux the version handling is done differently by libtool 
> in order to be consistent with other linux shared libraries.
> I think consistency with how things are done on other 
> platforms is less important than consistency with the general 
> expectations on the platform in question.


I'm OK with that, thank you.