Error: gdal-config not found while installing R dependent packages whereas gdal is installed

Please point out the point that I am missing:

openSUSE 11.3

xx@linux-y3pi:~/Desktop/R> sudo R CMD INSTALL rgdal_0.7-12.tar.gz root's password: * installing to library ‘/usr/lib64/R/library’ * installing *source* package ‘rgdal’ ... ** package ‘rgdal’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked configure: gdal-config: gdal-config checking gdal-config usability... ./configure: line 1353: gdal-config: command not found no Error: gdal-config not found The gdal-config script distributed with GDAL could not be found. If you have not installed the GDAL libraries, you can download the source from If you have installed the GDAL libraries, then make sure that gdal-config is in your path. Try typing gdal-config at a shell prompt and see if it runs. If not, use: --configure-args='--with-gdal-config=/usr/local/bin/gdal-config' with appropriate values for your installation. ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgdal’ * removing ‘/usr/lib64/R/library/rgdal’ 

xx@linux-y3pi:~/Desktop/R> whereis gdal-config gdal-config: /usr/local/bin/gdal-config xx@linux-y3pi:~/Desktop/R> gdal-config Usage: gdal-config [OPTIONS] Options: [--prefix[=DIR]] [--libs] [--dep-libs] [--cflags] [--datadir] [--version] [--ogr-enabled] [--formats] xx@linux-y3pi:~/Desktop/R> 

> sessionInfo() R version 2.15.1 (2012-06-22) Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit) locale: [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 [7] LC_PAPER=C LC_NAME=C [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base > 

xx@linux-y3pi:~/Desktop/R> gdal-config --version 1.9.0 xx@linux-y3pi:~/Desktop/R> proj Rel. 4.8.0, 6 March 2012 usage: proj [ -beEfiIlormsStTvVwW [args] ] [ +opts[=arg] ] [ files ] 

linux-y3pi:~ # $PATH bash: /home/xx/qtsdk-2010.05/qt/bin/:/home/xx/qtsdk-2010.05/bin:/home/xx/qtsdk-2010.05/qt/bin:/home/xx/qtsdk-2010.05/qt/bin/:/home/xx/qtsdk-2010.05/bin:/usr/lib64/mpi/gcc/openmpi/bin:/home/xx/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games: No such file or directory 

7 Answers

In Ubuntu 18.04

I fixed this by sudo apt install libgdal-dev Hope someone find this helpful. Some above answers seems to be outdated and lengthy.

In earlier versions (which had apt-get)

sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev

You need the -dev package with headers and shared library links for development besides the normal package for deployment. Two different use cases as far as the distro is concerned.

On my distribution:

edd@max:/tmp$ dpkg -l | grep gdal | cut -c-72 ii libgdal1-1.7.0 1.7.3-6ubuntu3 ii libgdal1-dev 1.7.3-6ubuntu3 edd@max:/tmp$ 

and R CMD INSTALL rgdal_0.7-8.tar.gz works just fine as you would expect from a CRAN package given all the build-time checks at CRAN.

Update late 2016: As @JoshO'Brien points out in the comment

Minor update: Here in 2016, running Ubuntu 14.04.2, libgdal1h seems to have replaced libgdal1(though libgdal1-dev is still needed). At least I get an error to that effect when I attempted to apt-get install libgdal1

For Ubuntu 16.04 the corresponding line would be
sudo apt-get install libgdal1i

Such renaming of upstream libraries is common; something such as apt-cache search libgdal can help locate the current package names. The important key though is that the "abstract" development package libgdal-dev is all that is needed to build as it pulls the "concrete" current run-time package (here: libgdal1i) in via a dependency.

You can use apt-file package, to find which package contains the missing file you are looking for.

First install the apt-file using the command apt-get install apt-file
Update apt-file using the command apt-file update
Now you can use apt-file to find the missing file. apt-file search gdal-config

For my case, I got the same error when configuring grass-7.1 from svn. As shown below:

 $ ./configure ...more... checking whether to use GDAL... yes checking for gdal-config... /usr/bin/gdal-config ...more.... ./configure: 1: ./configure: /usr/bin/gdal-config: not found ./configure: 6093: test: =: unexpected operator configure: error: *** Unable to locate GDAL library. 

But, after looking for gdal-config file with apt-file as shown below, I was able to resolve the error, after installing the package libgdal1-dev

$ apt-file search gdal-config 

Results

libgdal1-dev: /usr/bin/gdal-config 

So I installed libgdal1-dev, as shown below:

$ sudo apt-get install libgdal1-dev 

This happens because the configuration failed for package ‘rgdal’ so we have to install necessary dependencies.

The packages libgdal-dev and libproj-dev are required:

sudo apt-get install gdal-bin proj-bin libgdal-dev libproj-dev

Then install rgdal by

install.packages("rgdal") 

Load rgdal by

library(rgdal) 

On macOS

brew install gdal

removed the error

gdal-config not found

Try this on CentOS 6

sudo yum install gdal gdal-python gdal-devel mapserver mapserver-python libxml2 libxml2-python python-lxml python-pip python-devel gcc 

Read the reference manual.

SystemRequirements for building from source: GDAL >= 1.6.0 library from and PROJ.4 (proj >= 4.4.9) from ;