[gdal-dev] Python bindings: aliasing gdal.Open and gdal.OpenEx

[Even Rouault]

Hi,

I'd like to have a broader feedback of the community on 
https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/pull/14763 . Please read it in detail. In 
practice, the main backwards incompatibility would be the point 1 I 
mention in the PR text, that is that for current users of 
gdal.Open(dsname), they would now get vector datasets opened in addition 
to raster ones. While I see this is as a long term benefit, at least one 
user (https://github.com/ubarsc/rios/pull/192) had to work around it 
since they expected gdal.Open() to fail on vector datasets. The 
workaround being to use gdal.OpenEx(dsname, gdal.OF_RASTER) that will 
work before and after the PR,  or if targeting only post PR state, 
gdal.Open(dsname, gdal.OF_RASTER)

PR 14763 would be potential material for a GDAL 4 if that did occur, but 
I don't know if it is desirable and even if it was, I don't think it 
would happen in a short or medium term (mostly because the GDAL dev 
community is too small to be able to gather a significant set of 
backwards incompatible change in a reasonable period of time, while not 
blocking features to be released at a reasonable frequency). So we're 
more in a situation where we land a few backwards incompatible change 
each (non bugfix) release.

Even

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