GDAL on Python 3.6.5 (64-bit)

Question

I've been trying to install GDAL on Python 3.6.5 (64-bit) on Windows for the past hour, and nothing works.

I've visited some questions on SO, watched a video on YT, but none of them applies to my situation (which there's nothing special about it).

Can someone provide a step-by-step solution, preferably a tested one, so I can figure out what exactly I'm doing wrong?

I'm willing provide any OS setting info/screenshot if necessary.

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Update: I'm trying to install GDAL to convert TIF (16-bit) files to JPG or PNG. Although I managed to install GDAL with the second method (at second try), I could not use gdal_translate. So not every GDAL lib/version works for me.

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First method:

• GDAL 2.3.0 (suggested here)

  • Dependencies:
    • libgdal (2.3.0 or greater) and header files (gdal-devel) (where/how do I get this?)
    • numpy (1.0.0 or greater) and header files (numpy-devel)

  • Requires "GDAL Windows Binaries". A Google search led me to this: DownloadingGdalBinaries – GDAL

    • Tried GISInternals -> Releases -> release-1911-x64-gdal-2-3-0-mapserver-7-0-7
    • Downloaded "gdal-203-1911-x64-core.msi" and "GDAL-2.3.0.win-amd64-py3.4.msi". (The latest release is for python 3.4?)
    • Installed "gdal-203-1911-x64-core.msi" to "C:\Program Files\GDAL".

    • In README, it says

      Add the installation directory bin folder to your system PATH...

      C:\gdalwin32-1.7\bin

      There is no "bin" folder in "C:\Program Files\GDAL". Folders in GDAL dir: "csharp", "gdal-data", "gdalplugins", "license", "projlib". So ...?

      I'm not even going to finish this because it seems outdated (I've emailed it's author about the description, so I hope it gets fixed). I followed the other steps, but it didn't work, obviously. Feel free to try it out.

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Second method:

• Gohlke Pythonlibs (suggested here)

  • Downloaded "GDAL-2.2.4-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl"

  • At the top of the page, it says (I probably missed this in the first try)

    Many binaries depend on numpy-1.14+mkl and ...

    So I've downloaded "numpy-1.14.4+mkl-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl" (it's in the same page)

  • Installed them:

    pip install numpy-1.14.4+mkl-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl

    pip install GDAL-2.2.4-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl

    and it worked (though I'm getting missing dll (ogr_FileGDB) error when using gdal_translate, so not using this)

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I'll be updating this with the methods I've tried.

Answer 1

The prebuild GDAL version from conda-forge works great on windows 64 bit python 3.6.5

You can install Anaconda (or Miniconda)

After installing Anaconda, I usually use the Anaconda prompt instead of the regular windows command prompt.

(Optional) If you would like to isolate this in a specific environment

I would recomend using environments with anaconda so create some environment like this

conda create --name gdal_env python=3.6.5

activate gdal_env

Environments are not required, so you can skip this step and continue to installing gdal.

Install gdal

conda install -c conda-forge gdal

I have found conda-forge to be the (by far) easiest way to install GDAL on windows. If for some reason you are required to use another python distribution, i have found the prebuild binaries from here to work fine too https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ if you follow this guide