Building GDAL on Windows with Microsoft Visual C++

Historically, it was possible to distribute Debug/Release binaries of GDAL that were pre-built.  However...

•  Since MSVC 2005, the awful "side-by-side assemblies" means that Debug binaries built on one computer will not work on another computer.
•  Until 2012, there used to be .vcproj/.sln files for GDAL, but these became too difficult to maintain.
• Today, we have to build GDAL using the command line.

Simple steps for Release-mode only:

1. Get the GDAL source.  The download instructions are on the GDAL site.
2. Unzip it to create your GDAL folder, e.g. "gdal-2.0.0"
3. Open a command prompt, go to that folder.
4. nmake -f makefile.vc
nmake -f makefile.vc devinstall

To build both Release and Debug:

• Please see this post on the GDAL list for instructions on how to modify the GDAL makefiles to permit building correct, separate Debug and Release builds.  These have been tested and confirmed up to GDAL 2.0.0 and MSVC 2015.

For any questions, please ask on the GDAL mailing list.