# GDAL Python Utilities

The GDAL python utilities are included with GDAL. If you've installed GDAL you already have them. However you may want to use a newer or older version of the utilities without changing GDAL. This is where gdal-utils comes in.

gdal-utils: is the GDAL Python Utilities distribution. This is what you install. Its home page is https://pypi.org/project/gdal-utils/ . Install with `pip install gdal-utils`.

osgeo_utils: is the python package. This is what you use in your code after installing, e.g. `from osgeo_utils import ...`. If you're not writing code, ignore it.

Commonly used utilities include:

- gdal_merge

- gdal_edit

- gdal_calc

- ogrmerge

For the full list see Programs and note the ones that end in `.py`.

## Developers

Read the gdal-utils project charter.

Clone or download the gdal project: https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/

In your IDE set gdal-utils as the root folder, .../swig/python/gdal-utils.

> ./osgeo_utils - contains the Programs (those scripts that have launch wrappers created by pip and added to PYTHONHOME/Scripts)

> ./osgeo_utils/samples - working python scripts but not typically available in path (run them with `python3 path/to/samples/something.py`)

Improve the docs by editing the RST pages in .../doc/source which generate the web pages:

- https://gdal.org/api/index.html#python-api

- https://gdal.org/programs/index.html#programs

- https://gdal.org/api/python_samples.html

Contribute changes with Pull Requests from your fork to main GDAL project and use gdal-utils label.