@mdsumner Ah, so they are people using that outside of GDAL. Interesting.

An alternative to opening with "MEM:::DATAPOINTER=..." is to use the GDALCreate() function on the MEM driver, creating 0 bands.
And then use GDALAddBand(hDS, options) with options DATAPOINTER, PIXELOFFSET and LINEOFFSET.
And possibly using SetGeoTransform() / SetSpatialRef() to add additional properties.
Cf https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/master/gcore/rasterio.cpp#L1551-L1592
So instead of vapour::gdal_raster_data(mem(v, ....)) you'd rather offer a vapour::gdal_raster_from_mem(v, ....)

The unsafe part of the "MEM:::DATAPOINTER=..." open syntax is that it could be used in a hostile context as a tile name of a virtual mosaic format to causes crashes or worse.

@sgillies ok, I see rasterio/rasterio uses that at https://github.com/rasterio/rasterio/blob/ffe77ecc7bd0f92597e6ca700e0987f33ba8f0f9/rasterio/_io.pyx#L2256 .
Same suggestion as above for the full future proof solution. A quick workaround is to obviously use CPLSetThreadLocalConfigOption("GDAL_MEM_ENABLE_OPEN", "YES") / CPLSetThreadLocalConfigOption("GDAL_MEM_ENABLE_OPEN", NULL) around that line.

I think in R the people is me-only. :) Useful for exploring warper output on crafted matrices. Appreciate the heads up about how I should provide it.

The other case I saw it being used (slightly) outside of rasterio:

https://gist.github.com/vincentsarago/b00f50f8b66ab5ccbd4449f6a1bd8b71

@mdsumner Ah, so they are people using that outside of GDAL. Interesting.

Hello, we are also using it in OrfeoToolBox (if changes can help, you can look here https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/orfeotoolbox/otb/-/merge_requests/1056 )
About the migration, users needs to also to be careful if they previously use a custom BANDOFFSET parameter. They need to report this shift between bands when using DATAPOINTER option that you can add with AddBand function.

Also I was wondering: now how do you open a dataset with the "GA_ReadOnly" or "GA_Update" ?

now how do you open a dataset with the "GA_ReadOnly" or "GA_Update" ?

The former for read-only scenarios, the later for read-update ones

now how do you open a dataset with the "GA_ReadOnly" or "GA_Update" ?

The former for read-only scenarios, the later for read-update ones

Thank you, but that was not want I wanted to know, maybe my previous question is confuse.
Before your changes we could do:
MEMDataset* mds = GDALOpen("MEM::: ...", GA_ReadOnly) or MEMDataset* mds = GDALOpen("MEM::: ...", GA_Update).
This parameter is set here https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/master/frmts/mem/memdataset.cpp#L1188 . How do you set this parameter now that we use the GdalDriver->Create syntax ?

How do you set this parameter now that we use the GdalDriver->Create syntax ?

Ah I see. You can't. Datasets returned by Create() are assumed to be read-write. If you provide a read-only memory mapping, you should be careful not to call RasterIO(GF_Write, ...) or another method that can alter pixel values. That's admitedly an oversight

Ok, thank you for the clarification! Indeed the MEMDataSet::Create set the eAccess to GA_Update by default, I miss this one.

Maybe the best way to do it in our code is to provide one read-only wrapper method which returns a const DataSet and one R/W method which returns a writable dataset.