Python bindings ogr module removed from gdal 3.2 / Not in release Notes

[cpaulik]

Expected behavior and actual behavior.

import ogr

gives

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ogr'

in gdal 3.2.

I know that we should use from osgeo import ogr but since I could not find this breaking change in the release notes I was wondering if it was removed by mistake or forgotten in the release notes.

It still works under gdal 3.1

Operating system

Arch linux

GDAL version and provenance

gdal 3.2 from conda-forge

[rouault]

"import ogr" still works fine for me with 3.2 . I can't think of any related change.

[cpaulik]

Thanks. I've created conda-forge/gdal-feedstock#419 to see if it is a conda-forge issue.

Closing this for now.

[cpaulik]

conda-forge claimed to have changed nothing. But they needed to remove their import ogr statements in their python tests.

Does gdal have a CI test for this import? If so then something in the middle goes wrong.

[ocefpaf]

"import ogr" still works fine for me with 3.2 . I can't think of any related change.

It did not work in our builds. Should we activate a flag or something to enable it?

[rouault]

@cpaulik I can actually reproduce the issue now. The fact that it worked was due to testing in a dev environement where "ogr" is a subdirectory... So it doesn't appear that "import ogr" is tested in CI. That said this has been deprecated for 10 years or so.

@idanmiara I believe this change might be caused by your rework of setup.py when moving the utilities under osgeo/scripts . The gdal.py, ogr.py, etc. files that used to be generated under swig/python/build/lib.XXXXXX are no longer there

I'm a bit hesitating what to do now: should we restore the "import ogr" way or just update our NEWS to reflect the change...

[idanmiara]

@idanmiara I believe this change might be caused by your rework of setup.py when moving the utilities under osgeo/scripts . The gdal.py, ogr.py, etc. files that used to be generated under swig/python/build/lib.XXXXXX are no longer there

I'm a bit hesitating what to do now: should we restore the "import ogr" way or just update our NEWS to reflect the change...

I guess I could have been mistaken to think that the py_modules section in setup.py is deprecated.
I hope this fixes this issue:
#3150

[ocefpaf]

I'm a bit hesitating what to do now: should we restore the "import ogr" way or just update our NEWS to reflect the change...

I'm only one data point and, while restoring it would be "easy," the cat is out of the bag IMO. Document the change and move on.

PS: thanks for all the work on gdal!

[rouault]

Polling the wider community : https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2020-November/052921.html

[cpaulik]

I'm happy with documenting it and moving forward. We've already changed our imports.

[jomey]

How about doing a quick poll here by reacting with 👍 for moving on and 👎 for restoring?

[hobu]

Let's leave it gone. We should have done this at 2.0 but we held off. It will be annoying for a few downstream Python API users, but it is a simple import statement fix.