Using the latest GDAL with R packages on macOS

Dec 13, 2016 · 1 min read
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UPDATE: see more recent version of this post here.

I wanted to play around with the new sf package, which requires the latest GDAL (>= 2.0.0), GEOS (>= 3.3.0), and PROJ.4 (>= 4.8.0). However, the version of GDAL installed via brew is 1.11.4, so I needed to update to the latest version and reinstall a few R packages in order to get sf to work on macOS.

Update GDAL

## unlink the previous GDAL version
brew unlink gdal

## update GDAL to the latest version (2.1.2)
brew tap osgeo/osgeos4mac
brew install gdal2
brew link --force gdal2

(Re)install R spatial packages

Next, we need to install a few packages from source in order to use the new GDAL libraries:

## (re)install spatial packages from source
install.packages(c("rgeos", "sf", "sp"), type = "source")

## rgdal requires some additional configuration to build correctly:
##   based on http://stackoverflow.com/a/26836125/1380598
install.packages("rgdal", type = "source",
                 configure.args = c("--with-proj-include=/usr/local/include",
                                    "--with-proj-lib=/usr/local/lib"))
library(rgdal) ## confirm the GDAL version being used
R
Alex M Chubaty
Authors
Alex M Chubaty
Ecologist and simulation modeller

Dr. Chubaty is an ecologist, simulation modeller, and co-developer of the open source SpaDES simulation platform. He completed his PhD at Simon Fraser University modelling host selection in mountain pine beetle (MPB), and postdoctoral research at Université Laval and Natural Resources Canada developing forecasting models of MPB spread.

He currently operates FOR-CAST Research & Analytics in Calgary, Canada, which supports the development and integration of models simulating forest vegetation dynamics, wildfire, insect disturbance, and wildlife populations to inform decision making for land management and species at risk. He is an advocate for open source, open data, and reproducible workflows.