Installing GDAL with Anaconda

Question

I just did a fresh install of Anaconda3 and am trying to add GDAL/OGR. I've tried installing with both conda install gdal and conda install -c conda-forge gdal. In both cases, the install completes successfully, but when I import gdal, it raises the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Users\Jhook\AppData\Local\Continuum\miniconda3\lib\site-packages\gdal.py", line 2, in <module>
    from osgeo.gdal import deprecation_warn
  File "C:\Users\Jhook\AppData\Local\Continuum\miniconda3\lib\site-packages\osgeo\__init__.py", line 21, in <module>
    _gdal = swig_import_helper()
  File "C:\Users\Jhook\AppData\Local\Continuum\miniconda3\lib\site-packages\osgeo\__init__.py", line 17, in swig_import_helper
    _mod = imp.load_module('_gdal', fp, pathname, description)
  File "C:\Users\Jhook\AppData\Local\Continuum\miniconda3\lib\imp.py", line 243, in load_module
    return load_dynamic(name, filename, file)
  File "C:\Users\Jhook\AppData\Local\Continuum\miniconda3\lib\imp.py", line 343, in load_dynamic
    return _load(spec)
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

I've found several workarounds out there, but most date back a few years and don't reflect more recent updates or changes. Is there a fix for this problem that works in 2018?

Answer 1

There seems to be an incompatibility between the latest version of conda and vs2015_runtime and conda-forge gdal.

If I create a conda-forge env and specify vs2015_runtime=14, everything works:

conda create -n testgdal -c conda-forge gdal vs2015_runtime=14 

activate testgdal 

(testgdal) python 

Python 3.6.6 | packaged by conda-forge | (default, Jul 26 2018, 11:48:23) [MSC v.1900 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.  

>>> from osgeo import gdal
>>>

https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/291932

Answer 2

I've spent the day with that issue, and for me what worked was to install from wheels, as detailed on that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ybddFC80fU

It is pretty simple. The only thing I had to change was to also install Fiona from wheel first, otherwise I had an error saying "a GDAL API version must be specified...[]"

Answer 3

The following works reliably for me Ubuntu 20.04:

conda update conda    
sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev gdal-bin

export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/gdal
export C_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/gdal

# check gdal version with 
gdal-config --version

echo '
name: raster-pipeline
channels:
- defaults
dependencies:
- python=3.7.*
- cython
- numpy
- ipython
- libspatialindex
- libgdal=USE_GDAL_VERSION
- gdal=USE_GDAL_VERSION
- pip
- pip:
  - numpy>=1.18.5
  - GDAL==USE_GDAL_VERSION
  - pyproj>=2.6.1.post1
  - rasterio>=1.1.5
' > raster_pipeline.yml
  
conda env create -f raster_pipeline.yml -v 
 
conda activate raster_pipeline 
python -c "from osgeo import gdal"
conda deactivate 

Answer 4

Like everyone said there seems to be an incompatibility issue. Creating a new environment solved the problem. This worked for me

Go to anaconda navigator --> environments --> Create --> GDAL Go to anaconda prompt --> activate GDAL --> conda install gdal

Hope this will do. But you have to install other libraries again in this new environment.