Error installing geopandas:" A GDAL API version must be specified " in Anaconda

Question

This error raised while installing geopandas. I've looking for its solution on the web, but none of them really explain what happened and how to solve it.. This is the full error:

    Collecting geopandas
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/24/11/d77c157c16909bd77557d00798b05a5b6615ed60acb5900fbe6a65d35e93/geopandas-0.4.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Requirement already satisfied: shapely in c:\users\alvaro\anaconda3\envs\tfdeeplearning\lib\site-packages (from geopandas) (1.6.4.post2)
Requirement already satisfied: pandas in c:\users\alvaro\anaconda3\envs\tfdeeplearning\lib\site-packages (from geopandas) (0.20.3)
Collecting fiona (from geopandas)
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3a/16/84960540e9fce61d767fd2f0f1d95f4c63e99ab5d8fddc308e8b51b059b8/Fiona-1.8.4.tar.gz
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    A GDAL API version must be specified. Provide a path to gdal-config using a GDAL_CONFIG environment variable or use a GDAL_VERSION environment variable.

    ----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in C:\Users\Alvaro\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-install-oxgkjg8l\fiona\

That line "gdal-config --version" didn't work on anaconda prompt neither jupyter notebook. But doing "conda list" in the current problem environment . gdal version is 2.2.4 — Alvaro Morales, Feb 17 '19 at 15:43
so you're using anaconda or pip? for both? did you install gdal separately? — Josh Friedlander, Feb 17 '19 at 15:43
I tried to install geopandas with pip in the jupyter notebook and gdal with conda in the anaconda prompt — Alvaro Morales, Feb 17 '19 at 15:45
Really bad idea to mix env managers like that. I would uninstall what you've done with pip and conda, and try again just with conda - see my answer below. — Josh Friedlander, Feb 17 '19 at 15:46
I created a new environment with conda and with python 3.7.2. Then I installed geopandas with "conda install -c conda-forge geopandas" . but when I import geopandas in jupyter notebook it says that "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'geopandas'" — Alvaro Morales, Feb 17 '19 at 16:54
And also "geopandas" in sys.modules is false.. that's weird because I've just installed it.. — Alvaro Morales, Feb 17 '19 at 17:04
make sure you're in the new env in your notebook. You can run `!conda info --envs` and see which one is marked with a star — Josh Friedlander, Feb 17 '19 at 17:54
Simply updating my pip worked. ```python -m pip install --upgrade pip``` then ```pip install geopandas``` — Ritwik, Jun 04 '22 at 15:43

JDOaktown · Answer 1 · 2020-04-24T18:14:40.103

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pip install wheel
pip install pipwin

pipwin install numpy
pipwin install pandas
pipwin install shapely
pipwin install gdal
pipwin install fiona
pipwin install pyproj
pipwin install six
pipwin install rtree
pipwin install geopandas

here are the source links: http://geopandas.org/install.html#installation https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/user_guide/#installing-from-wheels https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#numpy

If you still have problems, consider uninstalling the above (pip uninstall) and reinstalling.

edited Apr 24 '20 at 18:14

answered Nov 19 '19 at 22:40

JDOaktown

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It worked wonders in a virtual env. I was installing fiona and gdal manually in a terminal. Now I just followed this sequence and voela! – ReinholdN Feb 12 '20 at 21:59
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The first line is `pip install wheels` or `pip install wheel`? – Osama Arshad Dar Apr 24 '20 at 07:36
pip install wheel – JDOaktown Apr 24 '20 at 18:14
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How to set the path for pipwin installed library. since I am inside my virtualenv, the package installed using pipwin are not listed inside venv/lib/site packages – Tekson Jul 30 '20 at 03:08
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Thank you, for some reason, this is the only solution that worked for me from this entire page of solutions! – Chiraz BenAbdelkader Oct 24 '20 at 19:13
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I should add that I also needed to install geos and decartes. – Chiraz BenAbdelkader Oct 24 '20 at 19:37
It seems that I can't install numpy with pipwin if six is not installed first: `ModuleNorFoundError: No module named 'six` – Miguel Gonzalez Nov 25 '21 at 13:39
Can`t believe this is the best solution. Isn't possible to try something just with GDAL? – Miguel Gonzalez Nov 25 '21 at 13:43
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The only solution that has worked for me on windows thanks! – Jane Kathambi Jan 01 '22 at 11:44
@JDOaktown, Thanks for the solution. – Abhilash Singh Chauhan Jan 16 '22 at 18:38
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If you get an SSL error `[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED]` on MacOs while installing on of the libraries this worked for me https://exerror.com/urllib-error-urlerror-urlopen-error-ssl-certificate_verify_failed-certificate-verify-failed-unable-to-get-local-issuer-certificate/ – Matija Žiberna Jan 26 '22 at 09:04
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What are the main differences between `pipwin` and `pip`? I hope they are both working through pypi.org...? – AD - Stop Putin - Apr 22 '22 at 11:15

Josh Friedlander · Answer 2 · 2019-02-17T15:50:23.513

Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a library designed for vector geospatial data formats. It's a prerequisite for installing Fiona, the Python API for OGR (which doesn't really stand for anything), which is in turn a prerequisite for Geopandas. On UNIX-like systems the gdal-config script tells Fiona stuff about your particular gdal installation.

It seems that your gdal-config is not in one of the usual places on your PATH, so Fiona was unable to find it.

If you're using Anaconda, best is to remove gdal with conda remove gdal and then do a fresh conda install geopandas.

As a general rule, if you're using Conda you should never use pip to install something inside it unless you're absolutely sure conda offers no support for it. (Many package can be found on conda by specifying the right channel - -c argument.) And specifically in the case of geopandas, the maintainers recommend using conda over pip, since pip requires you to install the dependencies correctly.

How can I share you the new error code? I has to be with this: ImportError: DLL load failed: No se puede encontrar el módulo especificado. — Alvaro Morales, Feb 17 '19 at 15:54
this is from conda? try `conda install -c conda-forge geopandas` — Josh Friedlander, Feb 17 '19 at 15:54
super great detailed answer to get the concepts clear, Thanks. — lil-wolf, Mar 17 '20 at 07:19

score 13 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 30 '20 at 17:58

I had a lot of issues myself installing geopandas, mostly showing error when downloading fiona and gdal. I did every step above and did a conda install geopandas but failed. The only thing worked for me is to install fiona and gdal wheel separately.

go to the link by Christoph: gohlke:https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#fiona

You can search for fiona and gdal wheel files. Make sure you choose the file as per your python version, if it is 3.7 then there would be cp37.
Download the file
go to command prompt, put cd and then pip install , install GDAL wheel file, then fiona, then just do pip install geopandas.

This solution worked for me.

score 10 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 27 '22 at 00:10

10

I solved this problem by running the following commands:

pip install pipwin
pipwin install gdal
pipwin install fiona
pip install geopandas

Works successfully on Windows.

edited Apr 27 '22 at 00:10

richardec

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answered Aug 28 '20 at 11:45

Marcelo Machado Pereira

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Just wanted to add that I succesfully installed gdal and fiona using pipwin instead of pip. – Maikflow Mar 30 '21 at 19:44
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I can also confirm that pipwin worked for installing gdal and fiona `pip install pipwin` `pipwin install gdal` `pipwin install fiona` `pip install geopandas` – Anil Mar 03 '22 at 12:01
Can you specify a default timeout option with pipwin? I'm getting timeout errors. – bob May 02 '22 at 16:06

Taie · Answer 5 · 2020-12-01T15:47:43.853

To install gdal, I followed the following steps:

downloaded the version that satisfies my computer (64 bit) from https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ . The file was GDAL-3.1.4-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl
Put the file in a folder on the desktop.
From cmd, i moved to that directory and executed python -m pip install GDAL-3.1.4-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl
This is followed by installing fiona the same way: python -m pip install Fiona-1.8.18-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl
For shapely, i executed conda install -c conda-forge shapely
After that, i was able to install keplergl as usual: pip install keplergl
install descartes: conda install -c conda-forge descartes (or python -m pip install descartes).

In this way, i didn't have to play around with the 'Environmental Variables' as this may affect other programs Cheers..

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 30 '20 at 23:54

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For me, the only solution was to install the ready binaries from here

https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#gdal

Then just install locally

pip install GDAL-3.1.4-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl

answered Nov 30 '20 at 23:54

Rami Alloush

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score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 25 '19 at 23:24

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One way in which I could install geopandas was through the Anaconda Navigator. Get into the environment and install the package 'geopandas'. After that I could import the geopandas package in spyder

answered Jul 25 '19 at 23:24

Devarshi Mandal

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 03 '22 at 13:23

I don't have conda installed, then using just pip I followed these steps:

Download GDAL and Fiona wheels directly on:

Then:

pip install <gdal.whl>
pip install <fiona.whl>

In my case I did pip install GDAL-3.4.1-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl and Fiona-1.8.21-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl. Where cp38 stands for python 3.8.

After that you are able to install geopandas with pip as well.

pip install geo pandas

Michael Delgado · Answer 9 · 2022-05-15T19:41:30.217

Installing geopandas (or any other library with complex dependencies)

Geopandas has very complex multi-language dependencies, some of need to be built with consistent compiler versions across packages. Because of this, the geopandas docs recommend the following:

conda is the recommended installation method. You can install geopandas from pip or source, but it's going to be a bumpy ride and it's not recommended. If you're installing conda for the first time, I recommend you start with miniconda, not anaconda, to keep your base env lean.
When using conda, you should not mix and match conda channels
When installing geopandas, try creating a fresh environment rather than installing into your base environment. This is especially important if you use anaconda or any other scientific python packages from the defaults channel in your base environment.
Try to create a new environment with everything you plan to use all at once rather than iteratively modifying the environment. In other words, if you want to use geopandas with scikit_learn, folium, and rasterio, install them together with a single conda create command

To create a fresh conda environment in which you install all necessary dependencies at the same time, using the conda-forge channel:

conda create -n my-geopandas-env -c conda-forge geopandas [all other packages you need]

For example, I might set up an environment with something along the lines of...

conda create -n my-geopandas-env -c conda-forge python=3.9 \
   ipython ipykernel geopandas scipy seaborn fiona matplotlib cartopy

Bundling your installations into a single environment creation step like this reduces the chance of packages falling out of sync. To speed this process up, you could first install mamba, a faster drop-in replacement for conda, into your base environment and then run the above commands with mamba instead of conda.

Generally, it's best to avoid installing much of anything in your base environment (cross-environment system utilities like mamba are some of the few exceptions). If you already have a complex base environment (maybe you started with anaconda rather than miniconda) this may be the time to delete your entire conda installation and start from scratch (I know that's terrifying... sorry! but it'll save you heartache in the future). mamba is great for speeding this process up.

Connecting your editor to the conda environment

Once you have installed all of the packages you need, activate your environment with conda activate my-geopandas-env. See the conda guide to managing environments for more info.

Jupyter/ipython

Some editors/IDEs including jupyter require additional packages - jupyter requires that ipython and ipykernel be installed in order to load the environment within the notebook or editor - that's why I included ipykernel in my list above.

Other IDES

To link this environment to an IDE such as VSCODE, spider, etc., find the location of this python version with conda run -n my-geopandas-env which python then point your editor to this python executable. Check the docs of your specific editor to get more targeted info about how to set up a conda environment for use with your editor.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 19 '20 at 15:46

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I will add

!pip install descartes

to @JDOaktown list.

answered Aug 19 '20 at 15:46

Zeinab Sobhani

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That worked in my case. Maybe it helps others as well. – Zeinab Sobhani Aug 26 '20 at 15:24
what is descartes and what didn't work for you to begin with? – JDOaktown Aug 26 '20 at 16:53

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 29 '20 at 16:06

0

I started with pip install geopandas and got the error, but later tried with conda install --channel conda-forge geopandas and the error disappeared.

answered Oct 29 '20 at 16:06

Max

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Nov 12 '20 at 03:30

Successfully installed in RHEL 7.8. It automatically downloaded the required packages. This might be helpful

Installing collected packages: certifi, pyproj, shapely, attrs, click, click-plugins, munch, cligj, fiona, geopandas Successfully installed attrs-20.3.0 certifi-2020.11.8 click-7.1.2 click-plugins-1.1.1 cligj-0.7.0 fiona-1.8.17 geopandas-0.8.1 munch-2.5.0 pyproj-3.0.0.post1 shapely-1.7.1

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Dec 28 '21 at 19:10

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If you want to install GDAL, Geopandas, Shapely, Fiona etc in a windows Virtual Environment download .whl files for all of them and first install GDAL using pip install gdal-.whl Following this command edit the activate.bat file in you venv\Scripts folder and add GDAL_CONFIG = \venv\Lib\site-packages\osgeo Then you can install rest using pip install

answered Dec 28 '21 at 19:10

Kumail Raza

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As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – R. Marolahy Dec 29 '21 at 06:08

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered May 17 '22 at 19:03

I started off with a clean environment gdal_test in Conda environments, but made the mistake of using the old activate gdal_test instead of conda activate gdal_test. This made Conda Environment resolving take forever, which is why I resolved to other methods at first.

Takeaway: let conda handle it, with a proper new environment.

Error installing geopandas:" A GDAL API version must be specified " in Anaconda

14 Answers14

Installing geopandas (or any other library with complex dependencies)

Connecting your editor to the conda environment

Linked