RE: [gdal-dev] Build OGR with ESRI SDE

[Lucena, Ivan]

Bruce,

>  I don't know how ESRI gets GDAL.dll to run on all systems unless they
>  include files from the c++ redistribution patch in their installation
>  because in addition to the above headaches I also have to apply a
>  Microsoft patch to the computers to get even the most basic GDAL program
>  (like gdalinfo) to run.  It will run where the compiler is but when you
>  are ready to distribute the program it must be built in release mode and
>  the patch must go on.

I had a similar problem a year ago developing a ArcMap extension that also uses GDAL. 

Since my ArcObject-based-DLL was launched on ArcMAP it was carrying the same process environment, meaning the same PATH and GDAL_DRIVER_PATH environment variable. The GDAL distribution on ArcGIS doesn't need to use GDAL_DRIVER_PATH but I wanted it load my plugin. The problem is that their GDAL 13 was no compatible with the one we all use and makes the loadlibrary to crash.

I tried to set and reset those variable internally on my code, before and after using the GDAL but that prove to be a bad idea since it certainly could cause disruption on ArcMAP.

The solution was to get their version of gdal_i.lib and .h's, but I guess you (or the entity you represent) would need to be a ESRI business partner to get that. 

Then I was able to compile my GDAL plugin and let the gdal13.dll on ArcMAP to find and load my plugin successfully.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

Ivan