[Gdal-dev] ECW JPEG 2000 SDK 3.3 - status update

[Tom Lynch]

Hi all,

Given it's of interest to the GDAL community I thought I would send
through an update on progress with the latest work on the ECW JPEG
2000 SDK.

We are currently in testing on a new release of the source code
distribution, which will be given the version number 3.3.

The main goals of this distribution have been improved stability and
performance, and ease of installation, compilation and use on
platforms other than Windows.  This has seen the introduction of a
build superstructure based on the GNU tools autoconf, automake and
libtool, which will lead to a "configure; make install" build+use
procedure.  The endpoint of this process being to make life easier for
projects such as GDAL.

We will continue to maintain project files for Visual Studio versions
6.0 and 7.1 on Windows, and the Qmake-generated make files that were
previously included in the beta of version 3.2.

The build documentation will be updated significantly, with new
content detailing any remaining "gotchas", requirements, and
procedure.

I would like to thank members of the GDAL community for their feedback
and their reporting of issues they've noticed on this list,
particularly Frank (of course) and also Bill Binko, who has spent a
long time looking at some issues.

Changes to be included:

- GNU autotools build, tested on Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X
- Builds for both a single static library, and for shared libraries
- Sample SDK code integrated into the build system
- Fixes to some threading problems on Linux
- Fix to a bug in the ECW Huffman coder on big-endian hardware
- Changes to the caching subsystem to improve performance consistency
- Corrected and improved API and build documentation

The current cut of the distribution still has some issues relating to
the build and to portability that we consider to be show stoppers,
which is why it has not yet been made publically available.  But if
you think that the items mentioned above may help you with a problem
you've noticed in the older cuts, please feel free to contact me to
obtain copy of the code as it stands.

I have already had some useful feedback on it from some GDAL users,
and now is as good a time as there is to ensure that any problems you
have get fixed in the new distribution.

I realise that my responses to some of the recent problems that have
been noted with various versions of the SDK have been a little few and
far between, but I will be endeavouring to be more prompt in future,
and also to keep you all updated on the state of our work on a fairly
regular basis.

Thanks,


-- 
Tom Lynch
Development, ER Mapper
Phone:      +61 8 93882900
Fax:        +61 8 93882901
Email:      tom.lynch at ermapper.com
Web:        http://www.ermapper.com
Forums:     http://forum.ermapper.com