[gdal-dev] Libtiff advantages?

[Frank Warmerdam]

Christiaan Janssen wrote:
> I noticed in the make files for GDAL that you could optionally compile 
> in libTIFF to be used versus the builtin tiff handler code. Can anyone 
> explain what the advantages of using the library over the builtin code, 
> for instance are there performance benefits. Just curios, thanks.

Christiaan,

The built-in copy of libtiff is present to make building GDAL easier out of
the box.  But folks often like to build against an external libtiff for a
few reasons:

1) If libtiff is being used by other parts of the application or software
suite it avoids duplication.

2) If libtiff is being used by other parts of the application, then on
unix systems there can be problems with linking in two different versions
of the same library (this isn't so much a problem on win32).

3) It makes it easier to upgrade libtiff by itself.

There are no meaningful performance differences.

Best regards,
-- 
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