[Gdal-dev] uninstalling/upgrading gdal

[Maciej Sieczka]

Richard Greenwood wrote:
> I had built and installed gdal 1.3 on a linux computer, and recently
> did a build and install of 1.4 on the same computer. Daniel Morissette
> suggested that that might be the cause of some anomalies I am
> experiencing with mapserver. So my question - should I have
> uninstalled gdal 1.3 prior to installing 1.4, and if so, how should
> that be done?

checkinstall (instead of "make install") is a convenient tool for
managing home grown packages. It catches what "make install" (or any
other specified install command) would do and creates a deb out of it
(or rpm, Slackware packages) instead. You can then install/remove the
package as you like.

I handle all my self-built software with checkinstall and no probs,
besides the new python bindings in GDAL, which checkinstall fails to
include into the package. If GDAL is built with old bindings though,
checkinstall builds the package fine.

I'd recommend using checkinstall 1.6.0 over older versions, and
definitely not recommend the newest 1.6.1, which has a nasty bug that
"package has unrelated files inside" [1]. 1.6.0 is the best release so
far, IMHO.

[1]http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/faq.php

Maciek