[Qgis-developer] QGIS and use of GDAL C++ vs. C API

[Frank Warmerdam]

PeteE, and others,

I had a discussion last night with Tisham, and one thing we realized
is that because QGIS is using the GDAL C++ API and it normally built on
windows with MSYS it is not possible to use the GDAL DLLs built using
Visual Studio.  While MSYS and Visual Studio binaries can be shared at
the C API level, this is not the case at the C++ level due to different
C++ name mangling.

Because of this specific case, and because in general the GDAL C API is
more stable, and more loosely coupled, I believe it is desirable to migrate
QGIS to the C API from the GDAL C++ API.  We have already taken this step
in MapServer, and it is my general advice for applications that don't want
to be overly tightly bound to a specific version of GDAL.

I'm planning to go ahead and do this migration in the raster branch if
there is no objection.  However, it will make it hard to merge partial
changes from the raster branch into trunk for future stable releases if
that is an issue (since there will be little changes all over the place
in the raster code).

Anyways, warning given.  I'll hold off for a day or two before I start
in case there are objections.

Best regards,
-- 
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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    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org