[R-sig-Geo] rgdal: libgdal requirements too restrictive

[Roger Bivand]

On Sun, 21 Apr 2013, Kirill Müller wrote:

> Dear Roger
>
> On 04/15/2013 10:49 AM, Roger Bivand wrote:
>> Please rather use R-sig-geo.
> Ok.
>> 
>> GDAL 1.6.3 was published 25-Nov-2009; 1.10.1 will be published soon. 1.6.3 
>> is no longer supported or fit for service, I'm afraid. GEOS is currently at 
>> 3.3.8, and 3.2.* are not supoorted or fit for service. 
> This would mean, in turn, that Debian stable is not "fit for service". Can't 
> I run GIS software on Debian at all, without installing stuff from source 
> (which might break Debian's otherwise decent package management)?

People do use Debian and Ubuntu, but the real place to go is the group 
apparently responsible for preparing binary packages for these 
distributions. I'm pretty sure that there are no impediments to building 
current GDAL, GEOS, etc. for Debian stable (I use RHEL 5, which is still 
gcc 4.1.2, but always install R, GDAL, GEOS etc. from source):

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis

also gives access to a mailing list with archives. You could ask there 
what resources they would need to offer less antiquated packages for 
stable, which is your specific problem - testing and unstable are not up 
to date, but are not bad. The only practical solution is for Debian GIS to 
provide newer binary versions of GDAL and GEOS for Debian stable. 
Installing from source is not a big price to pay for access to software 
that is up to date, if you cannot help Debian GIS to meet your needs.

Since I handle rgdal and rgeos maintenance, I can confirm not only that I 
have no access to Debian/Ubuntu systems, but have frequently had to answer 
questions related to binary packages of GDAL for those systems with 
issues, consistently advising installation from source. Unless you need 
very specific drivers, building from source is not a problem, nor is 
deploying to multiple machines directly (but not via the packaging 
system).

In fact neither GDAL nor GEOS are checked for rgdal/rgeos for multiple 
older versions; releases of the R packages are only checked against the 
current released GDAL and GEOS, occasionally (as now) tracking release 
candidates. However, because we link to (fairly) stable APIs, expressing 
this in the DESCRIPTION file makes no sense, it is handled in the 
configure scripts of the packages, which in some cases branch on C 
preprocessor -D definitions where necessary.

Hope this clarifies,

Roger

>> In both cases, numerous bugs have been corrected and additional 
>> functionality has arrived.
> And likewise, three years from now, the current version will look so much 
> 2013.
>> Your only choice is to install GDAL and GEOS from source, there is no way 
>> that rgdal and rgeos developer(s) - me alone - can back-support ancient 
>> dependencies. 
> It's not about really supporting an ancient version. It's about making the R 
> package installable at all under an operating system with, by default, rather 
> old software packages. The only change that is required on the side of 
> rgdal/rgeos is to lower the dependency. The package installs, the tests show 
> no error. Are you aware of any rgdal/rgeos functionality which would be 
> broken if run under an older GDAL/GEOS?
>
> I understand that this might raise additional maintenance burden. Can't you 
> just say "GEOS >= 3.3.8", or something like that, in the DESCRIPTION, and 
> have the configure script print a warning but allow installation if 3.2.0 <= 
> GEOS < 3.3.8? Same for rgdal. Anyone really coming up with a bug report for 
> an older version could then be asked to test it in a current installation, 
> say, in a virtual machine.
>
> I'd like to ask you to reconsider your position. After all, I have "fixed" 
> the problem for myself, and I can maintain the tweaked package sources for 
> myself. It's just to make life easier for those who have to run GIS on 
> Debian...
>> In conclusion - install from source. Maybe also write to R-sig-deb, but 
>> because this is external to thenm, they won't help. I think that this is a 
>> Debian GIS FAQ.
> I'd love to hear of any option, other than installing from source, to update 
> my Debian to supported versions of the required libraries -- without having 
> to update libc and the compiler as well. I have looked, but found nothing.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Kirill
>
>> 
>> On Sun, 14 Apr 2013, Kirill Müller wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear Roger
>>> 
>>> Just like rgeos [1], I cannot install current rgdal on the "most recent" 
>>> Debian stable. Switching to "testing" is not an option for us.
>>> 
>>> Debian squeeze comes with libgdal 1.6.3. I have changed the requirements 
>>> in the configure script and installed the package on my system, all tests 
>>> succeeded. I have attached the patch in case you want to reduce the 
>>> requirements for the other Debian users around.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> 
>>> Kirill
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1] https://github.com/rundel/rgeos/issues/1
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>
>

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, NHH Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no