GDAL 1.8.0
25.01.2011 17:52 · GIS · gdal, release
Frank Warmerdam announced the release of GDAL 1.8.0.
GDAL is a free translation library for raster and vector geospatial formats. The library provides applications with a single generic data model for all supported formats. In addition to the library itself, GDAL includes a set of powerful command line utilities for data translation and processing.
Among the major changes in this version:
- new GDAL drivers: GTX, HF2, JPEGLS,JP2OpenJPEG, JPIPKAK, KMLSUPEROVERLAY, LOS/LAS, MG4Lidar, NTv2, OZI, PDF, RASDAMAN, XYZ
- new OGR drivers: AeronavFAA, ArcObjects, GPSBabel, HTF, LIBKML, MSSQLSpatial, NAS, OpenAir, PDS, PGDump, SOSI, SUA, WFS
- numerous enhancements and fixes in OGR DXF and GML drivers
- the following RFCs are implemented:
- RFC 7: Use VSILFILE for VSI*L Functions
- RFC 24: GDAL Progressive Data Support (asynchronous data access)
- RFC 28: OGR SQL Generalized Expressions (allows most general purpose SQL functions to be used in SELECT statements)
- RFC 29: OGR Set Ignored Fields (improved performance when accessing vector features)
- RFC 30: Unicode Filenames (handling filenames as UTF-8 strings on all platforms)
- RFC 33: GTiff - Fixing PixelIsPoint Interpretation
- new tool:
gdallocationinfo
The full changelog can be found here.
The list of changes is impressive, and the adoption of RFC 29 and RFC 30 is particularly pleasing. For example, the changes described in RFC 29 will significantly improve performance and reduce memory consumption when processing vector data (about 1.5-2.5 times, according to tests). So far, SetIgnored is only implemented for shapefiles (by Martin) and SpatiaLite (my patch).
Once threading_branch is merged into trunk, QGIS will open large shapefiles much faster and many geoprocessing scripts will speed up. By the way, I will have to rewrite my data extraction script to take advantage of these changes.
I am looking forward to adding GDAL 1.8.0 to OSGeo4W, especially as Frank promised a global update of OSGeo4W after the release. GDAL 1.8.0 will be the main version instead of the outdated 1.5.4, and Python 2.5 will be replaced by 2.7.