[gdal-dev] Creation of a new driver from scratch

[Even Rouault]

> It is indeed desired that the code style of the contribution matches GDAL's style to some degree. GDAL provides a .clang-format file that might be helpful when you are editing to provide some automated conformance.

Cf https://gdal.org/development/dev_practices.html#commit-hooks also to 
install pre-commit hooks to ensure the formatting is OK & fix it if not.

https://gdal.org/development/rfc/rfc8_devguide.html also gives some 
hints on the general development practices. Generally try to stick with 
the conventions you observe in source code of drivers you take 
inspiration from.

>
> You might be able to build a sln file using GDAL's CMake configuration, but there is no standard documentation about how to do this. Do know that most any configuration you provide must build and work with the standard GDAL CMake configuration which is typically invoked through the command line.

The source of "truth" will be the CMakeLists.txt file.

sln files are just a possible by-product of CMake that isn't stored in git.

You may just google "Cmake visual studio" as there's nothing GDAL 
specific regarding this topic. ==> 
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/cmake-projects-in-visual-studio?view=msvc-170 
among other links that you'll get

>
>> ·         Once I have a Visual Studio solution (sln) to inspire myself, how should I proceed to create the driver? Is there any pre-existing pattern or template to follow?
> Find an existing raster or vector driver in the project that matches MiraMon's vector or raster format and use it as a skeleton.
>
>> I would like to be able to debug it.
> Familiarize yourself with GDAL's tests (a good place to learn is to look at GDAL's CI configuration), get tests running locally on your machine, and then write tests that provide test coverage for your raster or vector driver.
For vector drivers, the test_ogrsf utility that is built with GDAL is 
used by most unit tests of vector drivers to check their compliance 
w.r.t expectations of what a driver should do/not do. Not that of course 
this is only generic testing. You also need to add tests that check that 
the content you read from a test file is the one you expect.

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