> inconsistencies

You'll be interested in the changes in 3.11, a single `gdal` entrypoint with a modern CLI. https://gdal.org/en/stable/development/rfc/rfc104_gdal_cli.h...

Installation is still a beast, mainly because it's one monolithic thing. It's a spatial analysis library, dozens of applications, and hundreds of filetype drivers - all in a single build process. Each driver has its own quirks and the abstraction leaks like a sieve. In retrospect, I think the spatial logic, the drivers, and the apps should have been broken up into loosely-coupled components. But the convenience of an all-in-one megalith was hard to beat.