[Gdal-dev] what does gdal-grass provide?

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 09:10:35 -0700, Jack Varga <jvarga at boulder.net> wrote:
> What exactly does gdal-grass provide?  How/where do I get the latest
> version (assuming I need it)?
> 
> I'm experiencing odd behavior in qgis 0.6.0 when trying to load grass
> vector data and I was told that's because I compiled gdal with
> libgrass(51) and not with grass directly.  Its the old 'which came first
> syndrome, the chicken (gdal) or the egg (grass).  That is, you need gdal
> to build grass, but you need grass to build gdal, unless, (at least I
> thought), you build gdal with libgrass.

Jack,

The "gdal-grass" package installs a runtime-loaded GRASS plugin
for GDAL.  You would normally use it if you want GDAL to be
able to read GRASS datasets, but you don't want to build GRASS
before GDAL (as you use GDAL for GRASS).  So you would build
GDAL, then build GRASS and finally build the gdal-grass plugin. 

The latest version can be found at:

  http://gdal.org/dl/gdal-grass-1.2.3.tar.gz

It should work fine with GDAL 1.2.5, though GDAL CVS has changed rules
for how to find plugins, so if you use it with GDAL CVS you will need to move
the installed shared library into a new location. 

BTW, there are two fundamental GRASS drivers for GDAL.  One uses
libgrass (which it sounds like you have) while the newer one uses 
the GRASS 5.7 (or 6?) libraries directly.  Generally I would now advise
use of the 5.7 based version (such as the gdal-grass-1.2.5 plugin) though
it does have a number of limitations not found in the old driver. 

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
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