FAQ

Standalone python scripts

Because geofileops makes extensive use of multiprocessing, it is a good idea to always use the following construct in standalone scripts.

import geofileops as gfo

if __name__ == "__main__":
    gfo. ...

Not using this can lead to the following RuntimeError being thrown: An attempt has been made to start a new process before the current process has finished its bootstrapping phase. You can find more details on why this is needed in the python multiprocessing docs

Supported file formats

The spatial tools of geofileops (buffer, overlays,…) are only supported on geopackage (“.gpkg”, “.gpkg.zip”) and shapefile (“.shp”, “.shp.zip”) input/output files. However, uncompressed geopackages (“.gpkg”) will offer the best performance because most spatial operations (overlays,…) in geofileops need the data to be in geopackage. Hence, if the input and/or output is not “.gpkg”, often extra conversions will be happening under the hood. Some other reasons to consider using Geopackage are listed here: www.switchfromshapefile.org.

Most general file/layer operations can be used on all vector formats supported by GDAL as well as on paths using GDAL VSI handlers.