[PROJ] Closing in on PROJ 7 release date

[Kristian Evers]

Greg,

Breaking changes going from 6 to 7 will mainly be:

1. removal of proj_api.h as a public interface (this is the big one!)
2. removal of the Java Native Interface bindings (as they rely on the above)
3. ... and possibly RFC4-related changes regarding grid management (not sure about this one yet)

As for the NEWS file, I update that as part of the release procedure so that
won't cover 7.0 specifics until the first RC is out. For now you can keep an eye
on https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/issues?q=is%3Aclosed+milestone%3A7.0.0 
which tracks pull requests and issues related to the 7.0.0 release.

You are right in saying that the website doesn't have an obvious link to the repository
on GitHub. We should fix that. Where would be a good place to put it? Development section?

I plan on maintaining the 6.3.x branch during all of 2020. I don't know how much longer
than that it make sense to keep it alive, but at least it should extend the period
that packagers can keep software that depends on proj_api.h. An updated release
schedule is on my todo-list! 

/Kristian

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> 
Sent: 13. januar 2020 16:29
To: Kristian Evers <kreve at sdfe.dk>
Cc: proj at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [PROJ] Closing in on PROJ 7 release date

Kristian Evers <kreve at sdfe.dk> writes:

> This is a reminder that we are getting close to the release of PROJ 7.0.0 on March 1st.
> Since this is a major version release I plan to put out a release candidate earlier than
> usual.

pkgsrc has not yet updated to 6 due to a lack of confidence on my part
that proj-depending packages will break, although perhaps it is now time
to do that.  My impression is that at least some other packaging systems
have also not upgraded to 6.

So, I wonder if you or someone could share a quick summary of any API
breaks or withdrawals from 6 to 7?  (From a packaging point of view,
going from "if you define WANT_OLD_API and that worked in 6 and doesn't
in 7", that's an API withdrawal.)

(I was about to review NEWS on master from the repo, but it seems that
  https://proj.org/development/index.html
does not, or does not obviously have, a link to the sources.
Having found what I think is the right repo at
https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/
it seems the master branch NEWS doesn't have any 7 entries.)

I will of course need to know if there is an ABI break when doing the
update, but that is not a problem for the packaging system, as simply
noting that and expecting everything to be rebuilt is well within
normal.

Thanks,
greg