Feature Request: Build sf with File Geodatabase (FGDB) driver by default

[jacksonvoelkel]

Is it possible to include the ability to write to an Esri FGDB by default for st_write()? I know that it is a possibility to compile gdal with different settings to avoid OpenFileGDB's inability to write to a GDB, but it would truly make sf perfect if I had the ability out of the box by just installing sf.

Is this even something that can be handled via sf, or would this be up to another package (e.g. rgdal)?

[edzer]

That would require linking sf against a GDAL version that is built against proprietary software. So it should be possible, but won't happen for instance with the CRAN binaries you're probably using. Maybe you can ask ESRI to do this for you? Isn't their R-ArcGIS bridge fulfilling your purpose?

[edzer]

Your issue BTW is to get a custom build of GDAL, and then a standard build of sf against that, so I'm closing here as this is not an issue with sf.

[jacksonvoelkel]

Thank you for the clarification @edzer! The issue we have with R-ArcGIS bridge and arcgisbinding is that they're just writing to a shapefile first, and then using arcpy to copy it into a GDB (i.e. no direct write from R to the GDB). Without writing a novel here, we encounter occasional issues with shapefiles written with st_write() being copied into GDBs.

We hoped that we were overlooking a (simple) direct sf to GDB solution, but you've cleared that up for me - thanks!

[edzer]

Talk to ESRI, have them contribute a GDB writer to GDAL's OpenFileGDB driver: it's that simple.