Fwd: Re: [gdal-dev] FWTools and GDAL 1.7.0

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 11-01-06 06:43 PM, Jason Roberts wrote:
> Frank,
>
> Thanks for your thoughts. Based on them, I'd recommend the following two
> things be created.
>
> 1. GDAL windows installation program, or at minimum, a wiki page that says
> how to install the GDAL libraries and utilities (executables and Python
> scripts) to \Program Files\GDAL\... Perhaps a quick compromise would be for
> Tamas's build system to produce a .zip that would have everything in a
> suitable directory structure and for wiki page to instruct the user "just
> unzip this to \Program Files\GDAL\...".
...
> What do you think?

Jason,

I'm supportive, but not necessarily willing to take it as action item
for myself.

I would suggest building it as an installer .exe, perhaps using NSIS as
I did for FWTools, or perhaps the method mentioned by Jurgen produces
a nice installer.

One question not discussed is whether GDAL should be minimalist or
maximalist.  That is, do we want to include as many formats as possible
despite the fact that it drags in lots of supporting libraries?  If we
just use whatever decision OSGeo4W uses then we will have a fairly
maximalist solution which is ok I suppose but might make integration of
the resulting GDAL in other complex applications messy.

I would like to suggest production of such an installer be done in such
a way that the generating scripts live in SVN somewhere, and with
instructions for the process in the wiki so it isn't all tied to one
person (as FWTools was).

Man, I'm really tempted to leap into this myself but I have so many
other outstanding items right now.  I am willing to assist in an
effort by a small (2-3 people?) team.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent