Building GDAL 1.9.x with ESRI FileGDB support on OS X Lion

• Download the SDK from ESRI's website http://resources.arcgis.com/content/geodatabases/10.0/file-gdb-api
• Extract the SDK, and put the contents of the directory in a known location, I used ~/local/filegdb. Here's an example path to one of the files: ~/local/filegdb/lib/libFileGDBAPI.dylib
• I use ~/local/filegdb so it can stay isolated in it's own place. You can put it anywhere, but the next few steps might be different.
• Go into the directory containing the FileGDB SDK, e.g. ~/local/filegdb
• ESRI built these dylib's using @rpath's, so to avoid needing to mess with DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, I updated the @rpath's using install_name_tool. There might be a more elegant way to handle this. If so, comments are welcome!
• Here are the commands I used to patch the dylibs, this is not required if you want to use DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH yourself:

    install_name_tool -id "$(pwd)/lib/libFileGDBAPI.dylib" ./lib/libFileGDBAPI.dylib
    install_name_tool -change "@rpath/libfgdbunixrtl.dylib" "$(pwd)/lib/libfgdbunixrtl.dylib" ./lib/libFileGDBAPI.dylib
    install_name_tool -id "$(pwd)/lib/libfgdbunixrtl.dylib" ./lib/libfgdbunixrtl.dylib

• To verify the paths, use otool -L lib/libFileGDBAPI.dylib and otool -L lib/libfgdbunixrtl.dylib and make sure the paths are correct
• We need to make some changes to the configure.in script for GDAL now, since the FileGDB config script hasn't yet been updated for the OSX FileGDB SDK
• In the GDAL source root, edit the configure.in and replace it with:
  • 1.9.0 https://gist.github.com/2005082
  • 1.9.1 https://gist.github.com/2784084
  • 1.9.2 https://gist.github.com/5051253
• In the GDAL source root, run ./autogen.sh to re-create the configure script
• Now run the configure script:

    ./configure --with-fgdb="$HOME/local/filegdb"

• The configure script has many options, here is the configure line I use for my custom build: https://gist.github.com/2005091, if you have other GDAL builds on your machine (e.g. homebrew) that you don't want to interfere with, I recommend at least using --prefix="$HOME/local" or some other place on your machine besides /usr/local (default for homebrew) or /opt/local (default for MacPorts).
• If it worked properly, you should see in the output of configure indicating yes for FileGDB support
• Build it:

    `make && make install`

• If everything worked, it's time to test it out! Here's a test file: http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/raw-attachment/wiki/FileGDB/test_fgdb.gdb.zip

    which ogr2ogr        # make sure it's the correct ogr2ogr first
    ogrinfo --formats    # list out the formats
    ogrinfo ~/Downloads/test_fgdb.gdb
    
    #convert FileGDB directly to PostGIS
    ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" PG:"dbname='somedatabase' host='localhost' port='5432'" ~/Downloads/test_fgdb.gdb

Using this build of GDAL in a KyngChaos build of QGIS

# save your current GDAL so you can put it back if you want
cp /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/1.8/GDAL /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/1.8/GDAL_orig

# symlink the custom GDAL build to the place QGIS looks
rm /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/1.8/GDAL
ln -s ~/local/lib/libgdal.dylib /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/1.8/GDAL

Note: to select one in QGIS, go to Add Vector Layer -> select the Directory radio button -> Select your .gdb directory

I had some problems opening certain FileGDB's. I believe the API only supports FileGDB's created with ArcGIS 10.0+.

More info: http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/FileGDB