GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library

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is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single raster abstract data model and single vector abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. The NEWS page describes the December 2018 GDAL/OGR 2.4.0 release.

Traditionally GDAL used to design the raster part of the library, and OGR the vector part for Simple Features. Starting with GDAL 2.0, both sides have been more tightly integrated. You can still refer to the documentation of GDAL 1.X if needed.

Master: http://www.gdal.org
Download: http at download.osgeo.org

User Oriented Documentation

• Wiki - Various user and developer contributed documentation and hints
• Downloads - Ready to use binaries (executables)
• Supported raster formats (155 drivers) : GeoTIFF, Erdas Imagine, ECW, MrSID, JPEG2000, DTED, NITF, GeoPackage, ...
• Supported vector formats (95 drivers): ESRI Shapefile, ESRI ArcSDE, ESRI FileGDB, MapInfo (tab and mid/mif), GML, KML, PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, GeoPackage, ...
• Raster utility programs : gdalinfo, gdal_translate, gdaladdo, gdalwarp, ...
• Vector utility programs : ogrinfo, ogr2ogr, ogrtindex, ...
• Geographic Network utility programs : gnmmanage, gnmanalyse, ...
• GDAL FAQ
• Raster and Vector data models and architecture
• Virtual File Systems (compressed, network hosted, etc...): /vsimem, /vsizip, /vsitar, /vsicurl, ...

Other resources:

• GDAL/OGR Governance and Community Participation
• GDAL Service Provider Listings (not vetted)
• Acknowledgements and Credits
• Software Using GDAL

Developer Oriented Documentation

• Building GDAL From Source
• Downloads - source code

Tutorials

• Raster topics:
  • Raster API tutorial
  • Raster driver implementation
  • Raster Virtual format (VRT)
  • GDAL Warp API tutorial (Reprojection, ...)
• Vector topics:
  • Vector API tutorial
  • Vector driver implementation
  • Vector Virtual format (VRT)
  • OGR - Feature Style Specification
• Geographic Network Model topics:
  • GNM basics
  • GNM API tutorial
• Projections and Spatial Reference Systems tutorial (OSR - OGRSpatialReference)

API documentation

• API Reference
• gdal.h: Raster C API
• ogr_api.h: Vector C API
• gdal_alg.h: GDAL Algorithms C API
• ogr_srs_api.h: Spatial Reference System C API
• gdal_utils.h: GDAL Utilities C API
• GDALDataset C++ API
• GDALRasterBand C++ API
• OGRLayer C++ API
• OGR SQL dialect and SQLITE SQL dialect

Conference

FOSS4G 2018 is the leading annual conference for free and open source geospatial software. It will include presentations related to GDAL/OGR, and some of the GDAL/OGR development community will be attending. It is the event for those interested in GDAL/OGR, other FOSS geospatial technologies and the community around them. The conference will be held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, August 27th - September 2nd, 2018.

Mailing List

A gdal-announce mailing list subscription is a low volume way of keeping track of major developments with the GDAL/OGR project.

The gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org 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. The mailing list is also available in read-only format by NNTP at news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.gdal.devel.

Archives since 2005 are searchable on Nabble.

Some GDAL/OGR users and developers can also often be found in the #gdal IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

Bug Reporting

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

Bugs pre-dating GitHub migration can be found in Trac.

GDAL In Other Languages

The list of bindings of GDAL in other languages is maintained on the GDAL Wiki.

Citing GDAL/OGR in publications

Please refer to the CITATION file.