[gdal-dev] Not writing PAM files

[David Klaus]

Hi Javier,

I'm not sure if this applies to your use case, but I ran into a similar
issue embedding geolocation information in PDF files. Sidecar files were
created, but the geolocation data wasn’t embedded directly in the PDF.

At my company, we use the C++ GDAL API, and I was able to resolve it by
opening the GDALDataset with the GDALAccess::GA_Update flag.

As for whether GDAL reads sidecar files when present—I believe it does, but
I'm not entirely certain, so I’ll defer to others on that point.

Hope this helps,


On Mon, Nov 3, 2025 at 4:13 AM Javier Jimenez Shaw via gdal-dev <
gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi
>
> When I read some raster files (in particular thermal JPEG files), a side
> car file .aux.xml appears next to it.
>
> I would like to avoid the creation of this side car file, but I want to
> use any .aux.xml file if it is already there. Yes, I could imagine there is
> a performance impact if I read it several times, but I am going to read the
> file only once.
>
> The config option GDAL_PAM_ENABLED seems to be completely disabling PAM
> functionality:
>
> https://gdal.org/en/stable/user/configoptions.html#persistent-auxiliary-metadata-pam-options
> <https://gdal.org/en/stable/user/configoptions.html#persistent-auxiliary-metadata-pam-options>
> Reading the documentation, I would imagine that the PAM is completely
> disabled, not only the creation of the side car file while reading a raster.
>
> Is it posible to not create the .aux.xml, but use it if present?
>
> Thank you
> _______________________________________________
> gdal-dev mailing list
> gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org
>
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev
>


-- 
David Klaus
Carlson Software

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