[Gdal-dev] OGR dynamic driver loading...

[Frank Warmerdam]

Frédéric Trastour wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> i have recently experimented the use of the "GDAL_DRIVER_PATH".
> It's a great mecanism allowing me to :
>     - download a well built gdal/ogr distribution ( the openev's one for example ),
>     - compile my custom drivers against the associated includes/libs,
>     - use my drivers in all gdal/ogr applications including openev, gdal_xxx...
> 
> Did you plan to integrate the same kind of dynamic driver loading into OGR ?
> 
> It should be great to be able to do the same thing with vector drivers !
> _________________________________________________________________
> Frédéric Trastour - SpacEyes - dev at spaceyes.fr

Frédéric,

It is my intention to ... someday ... substantially restructure OGR to
be more closely integrated with GDAL. Amoung other things, this should
mean one central drivers registrar, and the OGRDataSource and OGRLayer
classes deriving from GDALMajorObject so they can have metadata.  As part
of that overhaul I would expect OGR drivers to inherit the same sort of
dynamic loading option as we have now for GDAL.

This would presumably be known as GDAL 2.0 since it would break binary
compatibility and likely even require a few small source changes to
OGR based applications.

However, I have no specific timelines nor are any of my clients driving
this overhaul.   In the meantime, I am hesitant to start building alternate
implementations of some of the capabilitie that already exist on the GDAL
side of things for OGR.

For me the handiest thing would be the ability to build a binary distribution
of GDAL (such as OpenEV_FW) that I can distribute with extra drivers for stuff
like Oracle that only work if Oracle client libraries are on the system.  But
of course, it is also handy for folks with site-local drivers of their own.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
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and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent