Use GDAL for handling raster data

[alexbruy]

GDAL (http://gdal.org) 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 to the calling application for all supported formats.

GDAL supports many raster formats (http://www.gdal.org/formats_list.html), using it in Circuitscape will allow to avoid raster conversion to ASCII Grid before analysis and also allow to produce outputs in any supported raster format. GDAL has Python bindings and already used/bundled with almost all major GIS packages (both FOSS and proprietary)

[ViralBShah]

We used to use GDAL at one point, but removed it for ease of distribution. Any particular raster format you are looking for?

[alexbruy]

My idea is to allow user use rasters without conversion. Rasters used in GIS mainly are not ASCII GRIDs but something other, e.g. TIFF/GeoTIFF, ECW, IMG, MrSID, JPEG and PNG. There are also many others, maybe not so widely used.

[bmcrae]

Definitely time to do this, at the very least for TIFFs. This should be a priority for our next release.