[Gdal-dev] best approach for writing AI grids

[Gregory, Matthew]

I've got an old build of GDAL (1.1.9) which still has support for the
GIO driver (which supported writing of ArcInfo GRIDS).  I've used this
in development for a long time now because my team wants AI grids.  Now
I'm feeling like a dinosaur and would really like to develop with more
current versions of GDAL (I've been using trunk in projects where I
don't need AI grid write support), so I'm wondering what approach to
take.

As I see it, there are two options:

1) Use gdal-1.1.9 and deal with the unavailibility of any new features
in GDAL
2) Use gdal-trunk in conjunction with the ArcInfo C API for conversion
from say Gtiff to GRID

I'm obviously leaning toward #2, but I typically overlook other options
that might be available.

Thanks for any help,
matt