[Gdal-dev] Building a customized raster format in ArcGIS 9.2using GDAL

[Peng Gao]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 12:22 PM
> To: Peng Gao
> Cc: Lucena, Ivan; gdal-dev
> Subject: Re: [Gdal-dev] Building a customized raster format 
> in ArcGIS 9.2using GDAL
> 
> Peng Gao wrote:
> > ArcGIS uses gdalplugins directory under the directory 
> containing the 
> > currently running .exe ("ArcGIS\Bin\gdalplugins").
> > 
> > We have found that, while there are success stories, it's hard to 
> > build a plugin using standard GDAL release, and make it 
> work with the 
> > gdal*.dll distributed with a particular ArcGIS release, because of 
> > header mismatch, and etc. We plan to make the matching 
> include and lib 
> > files available for download if there is enough interest. Also on 
> > Windows ArcGIS 92, and its GDAL library, are built using
>  > MSVC7.
> 
> Gao,
> 
> It would be desirable, in my mind, if we could have ArcGIS 
> using a build of GDAL that is ABI compatible with a stable 
> release of GDAL and matching the build configuration of the 
> binaries distributed by the GDAL project.
> 
> For instance, if ArcGIS 9.3 uses the 1.4-esri branch of GDAL, 
> built with
> vc7 as we use for the GDAL binary builds, it should be 
> possible to drop any of the plugins distributed with GDAL's 
> win32 builds.  Also, the gdal win32 sdk could be easily used 
> to develop additional plugins.
> 
> I'm also hoping to get MapGuide OS distributed with GDAL 
> builds corresponding to our "official release binaries" for 
> the same reason.
> 
> After largely ignoring the issue of win32 binary releases 
> targetted at a particular stable ABI (such as GDAL 1.4) I'm 
> now growing quite keen on the idea, and the value of being 
> able to prepare plugins seperately and use them widely.
> 

Frank,

Great idea. The new branch will make this possible for 9.3, and in the
future
releases we can try to sync up with regular GDAL releases.

Thanks,
Gao, Peng