[gdal-dev] Creating plugins for most formats

[Even Rouault]

Larry,

> 
> I am curious how hard it would be to build the core GDAL/OGR libs, then
> have most formats created as driver plugins, instead of directly linked
> from the main libs?
> 
> Reason: at Homebrew (and in other situations) every time one of the linked
> libs is updated then GDAL/OGR has to be rebuilt as well. An ideal situation
> is where the core libs do not need rebuilt except upon patches or updates
> to non-format-specific portions of the code base. Then, format plugins are
> rebuilt as necessary, relative to their external dependencies; and, all
> plugins rebuilt when a core libs update requires it.
> 
> Currently I find compiling driver plugins tedious, at least for
> 1.x versions, has this changed with 2.x versions?

No. Just a few more drivers can be compiled as plugins in trunk (HDF4, HDF5, 
GeoRaster, FileGDB, OCI and PG)

> Is there an easier way to
> compile a format as a .so driver plugin than the following 'manual'
> example, or am I just doing it in a tedious manner?

No easy way. You can still do it manually by linking to the required libraries 
and GDAL core.

Perhaps that could be an interesting objective if a CMake build system comes 
true (although can be tricky since there are sometimes interdependencies 
between drivers).

Even

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