[Gdal-dev] Proposal for Unified Windows Binaries

[Ari Jolma]

I've just spent numerous hours trying to get at least one of the 
JPEG2000 drivers to work with MinGW built GDAL. I managed to compile the 
ECW driver but linking was a too big pain since MinGW is not directly 
supported. I also tried to to compile and link the Perl bindings in 
MinGW to use the DLLs in FWTools. I ended up hacking dlltool, and I got 
the thing almost working but ended up in a mysterious "illegal instruction".

Perhaps my problem is sticking with MinGW. If I switched to MS C I could 
possibly use Perl (ActiveState) and other binaries.

Yes, the idea of being able to use (and tell others to use) a generic 
GDAL windows installation package as a part of a bigger geospatial tool 
system sounds good.

Ari

Howard Butler kirjoitti:
> All,
>
> I think the time has arrived for us work toward releasing Windows 
> binaries that coincide with software releases.  Numerous projects, 
> notably WorldWind, Python Cartographic Library,  GeoTools/GeoServer, 
> and many others are starting to more widely take advantage of all the 
> hard work the swig bindings maintainers have been doing.   There are 
> currently a number of folks generating Windows binaries, most notably 
> FWTools and MS4W.
>
> From a user's perspective, it is almost impossible to mix and match 
> the drivers and features (scripting bindings, Python utilities, etc) 
> that you might need if you want to do anything out of the ordinary for 
> each distribution.  Each distribution also has a very different aim, 
> with MS4W mostly tracking releases and FWTools covering the bleeding 
> edge.  As a purveyor of exotic drivers (ArcSDE), the different 
> distributions makes it hard for me to provide support, even though my 
> driver can be built as a plugin, because of the need to match up 
> linkages against each distribution.
>
> I think an "official" Windows GDAL release should have the following 
> traits:
> - All optional drivers built as plugins and all other drivers built in
> - No scripting bindings
> - No Python utilities
> - Include the .lib files
>
> Instead of a monolithic kitchen sink approach, I think it might be 
> better to provide the basic building blocks, which will allow 
> developers to start from the same base and augment from that.  For 
> example, with "GDAL Base," we could provide the Python bindings and 
> utilities as an installable package that targets each Python version 
> (same for .NET bindings, Java, and so on).
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Howard
>
>
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-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Geoinformaatio- ja paikannustekniikka
Geoinformation and positioning technology
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma