QGIS » QGIS Application

Hmm... as I can see in sources it still listed as gdal_merge.py (http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/browser/tags/1.10.1/gdal/swig/python/scripts)

$ dpkg -L python-gdal | grep merge
/usr/share/man/man1/gdal_merge.1.gz
/usr/share/doc/python-gdal/examples/gdal_vrtmerge.py.gz
/usr/share/doc/python-gdal/examples/hsv_merge.py.gz
/usr/bin/gdal_merge

Maybe it was renamed in Debian? Just checked packages in Slackware, Fedora and OpenSuSE: they all have gdal_merge.py not gdal_merge

The Debian package indeed strips the .py extension to conform to the Debian Policy (10.4 Scripts).

It's a "should" requirement, so we could chose to not strip the extension and just add a lintian override to not have it complain about this issue, but I'd prefer to support both variants in QGIS. Checking the file with and without extension shouldn't require much code.

Indeed, in ubuntu 12.04 it is installed as gdal_merge.py.

Are there any other gdal/ftools tools that use python scripts? These would require the same fix in this case.

Etienne Tourigny wrote:

Are there any other gdal/ftools tools that use python scripts? These would require the same fix in this case.

There are several tools in GDALTools plugin and in Processing. I'll try to update them ASAP

could the qgis code be made flexible to search for 'script.py' || 'script'?
having the debian package make an extra symlink seems too ugly to consider.

thanks,
Hamish

The GDAL plugins in QGIS heavily rely on the .py extension, so I think the best course of action is to revert the change in the GDAL Debian package.

Ubuntu trusty has gdal 1.10.1+dfsg-3, and because they're in pre-release freeze unlikely to sync gdal 1.10.1+dfsg-5 once it's available in Debian. Although they may consider it if asked about it explicitly.

I've reverted the change that strips the .py extension in the gdal package for Debian, now available in unstable.

I've also filed a sync request for Ubuntu trusty: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdal/+bug/1301763

The fixed gdal packages has migrated to Debian testing, and Ubuntu has synced the fixed package in time for Trusty.

From the distribution side this issue is fixed.