[R] rgdal installation with two versions of GDAL

[Roger Bivand]

Rob Skelly <rob <at> dijital.ca> writes:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am using GDAL 2.0 for most of my work, but rgdal depends on GDAL < 2. I
> have built and installed GDAL 1.11.2 in /opt/gdal-1.11.2, and rgdal
> compiles and installs into R, using the following command:
> 
> sudo R CMD INSTALL
> --configure-args="--with-gdal-config=/opt/gdal.1.11.2/bin/gdal-config"
> rgdal-0.9-2.tar.gz
> 

There are several questions here. Firstly, R-sig-geo is the appropriate list
for questions of this kind, if we ignore the need to understand library
search path management under a particular linux distribution.

GDAL 2.0 has not been released yet, and is not backward compatible with GDAL
1 (they use different object models). It is true that a release date at the
end of this month was proposed, but has not yet been confirmed. Given the
uncertain status of GDAL 2, there is no pressing reason to divert maintainer
assets to implementing changes in rgdal that may need frequent revision
tracking changes in GDAL 2, and keeping a parallel object structure for
released GDAL 1.*.

You do not say why GDAL 2 is essential for your work - maybe you could
simply use GDAL 1* until GDAL 2 stabilises? Neither your motivation nor your
affiliation are very convincing.

Please never post HTML-formatted mail.

Roger

> 
> So, the question is, how to I convince R to use the new library search
> path? I'm on xubuntu, and R is installed using apt.
> 
> Thanks,
> Rob
> 
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> 
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