open shapefile raised error: Assigning CRS to a GeoDataFrame without a geometry column is not supported...

[shuai-zhou]

I created a new Python env (python=3.9) on a new Windows 10 machine, and installed geopandas 0.12.2
When trying to open a shapefile using gdf = gpd.read_file('file_name.shp'), I got an error, ValueError: Assigning CRS to a GeoDataFrame without a geometry column is not supported. Supply geometry using the 'geometry=' keyword argument, or by providing a DataFrame with column name 'geometry'. Why is this happening and how to fix it? Thank you.

[martinfleis]

That is a weird one. Can you

1. post the full traceback so we can track where this comes from?
2. try using the latest geopandas (0.13)
3. share the file?

[shuai-zhou]

This error occurred to every .shp/.zip file I tried to open, and I knew those files had a "geometry" column. For example, I downloaded a shapefile from the Natural Earth, you can download the file from here. The traceback is as follows:

Thank you for troubleshooting this issue.

[martinfleis]

Can you ensure you are using the latest geopandas (0.13) and fiona (1.9.4) before I'll do any debugging?

[shuai-zhou]

Never mind. I messed up the environment. I solved the issue by creating a new environment and strictly following the instruction provided by geopandas

conda create -n geo_env
conda activate geo_env
conda config --env --add channels conda-forge
conda config --env --set channel_priority strict
conda install python=3 geopandas