Agustin Lobo wrote:
For the future, if the user is installing a QGIS binary (i.e., ubuntu
using Synaptic), is there any way to tell QGIS to use the gdal version
included in FWTools? And/or would just copying the appropriate gdal*
programs from the fwtools bin_safe directory to the /usr/bin directory
work?
The need for a gdal which includes copyright encumbered formats pops up
on the various mail lists every few months, if my memory servers. Today,
preparing the whole qgis tool chain is not trivial - and that's really
the only way to get the gdal options you want. IIUC, you *can not* just
copy binaries, *.dll's or *.so libs from fwtools into the qgis path.
Perhaps the "cleanest" solution would be to ask the package maintainers
to supply a "gdal-good", "gdal-bad" and "gdal-ugly" in the same fashion
that non-free audio codecs are available in binary packages. This way
the QGIS project and distros could stick with the FOSS only policy, but
a private user could choose to download from some 3rd party repository
an expanded package with the additional libraries he needs- just like
fwtools, but merged into qgis.
I realize that I'm asking already overworked package maintainers to take
on a whole new line of production, but it would definitely be a boost
to the popularity of QGIS to be able to grab a windows or ubuntu binary
with ecw support built-in. The QGIS people themselves cannot do this
since the licensing of ecw is too restrictive regarding redistribution
and changes - even tho' the source code is available - and won't fit in
with GPL. (Somehow, gvSIG managed to sidestep this issue?). So the only
way around for users who want a working GIS software stack, without the
chore of recompiling everything is to depend on a friendly neighborhood
package maintainer who is willing to compile gdal against the ECW libs.
Regards,
Micha
Thanks
Agus
Craig Leat wrote:
Hi Agustin
Agustin wrote:
Therefore, I understand I should not try to make the current QGIS I
have
work with a new compiled gdal.
Yes. gdal is a dependency, so if you change it you need to recompile
everything that depends on it.
BUt could I have a second version of gdal
which I would use for converting ECW and MrSid files to formats that
QGIS can accept?
Yes you can have multiple versions of gdal, just head my earlier
warning if you ever decide to build qgis. You could try the FWTools
[1] binary as this offers the formats [2] you need.
Craig
[1] http://fwtools.maptools.org/
[2] $ ./gdalinfo --version
GDAL 1.5dev, FWTools 2.0.0, released 2007/11/12
$ ./gdalinfo --formats | grep -i "ecw"
ECW (rw): ERMapper Compressed Wavelets
JP2ECW (rw+): ERMapper JPEG2000
$ ./gdalinfo --formats | grep -i "mrsid"
MrSID (ro): Multi-resolution Seamless Image Database (MrSID)
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