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GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library

GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that is released under an Open Source license. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats.

Master Page: http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/index.html
Maintainer: Frank Warmerdam.

Status

GDAL is in active use in a few projects, and includes a number of formats. Current translators include GeoTIFF (read/write), Erdas Imagine (read), ESRI .BIL (read/write), .aux labelled raw (read/write), DTED (read), SDTS DEM (read), CEOS (read), JPEG (read/write), PNG (read/write), Geosoft GXF (read) and Arc/Info Binary Grid (read). A full list is available in Supported Formats.

The gdal-dev@yahoogroups.com mailing list can be used for discussion of development and user issues related to GDAL and related technologies. Subscriptions can be done, and archives reviewed on the web.

API Documentation exists for GDAL, and was created using Doxygen.

Bug Reporting

GDAL bugs can be reported, and can be listed using BugZilla.

Source Access

The GDAL source is available by anonymous CVS:

export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.remotesensing.org:/cvsroot
cvs login
Password: anonymous
cvs checkout gdal
Update access to the CVS repository can be obtained by arrangement with the maintainer. The CVS tree can also be browsed on the web. The last full source release is available as gdal115.zip or gdal-1.1.5.tar.gz.

Key Documentation Entry Points

Building

GDAL has been successfully built on Linux, IRIX, Solaris, and Windows NT. On Unix platforms you might be able to build it as follows (assuming it is unpacked or checked out of CVS as gdal):
% cd gdal
% ./configure
% make
Some caveats are:

GDAL can be built on Windows using MS VC++ at the commandline. For this to work you will normally have to have run the VCVAR32.BAT script that comes with the compiler, and then do the following:

C:\> CD GDAL
C:\GDAL\> nmake /f makefile.vc
I frequently forget to update the Windows makefiles when I add new files, so if something comes up missing consider comparing the file lists in the appropriate makefile.vc against the GNUmakefile or just contact me.

GDAL Utility Programs

The following GDAL utility programs exist current: Binaries of the GDAL utility programs and the shared libraries are available for MS Windows NT/95/98 and Linux.

Related Information