[gdal-dev] GDAL 1.6.3 RC1 Released

[Howard Butler]

All,

The GDAL team is pleased to announce the release of GDAL 1.6.3 RC1.

http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/gdal-1.6.3-RC1.tar.gz
http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/gdal163-RC1.zip

The following issues were addressed in this release:

General:
 * r13533 (ogr postgis plugin) have been added to the stable branch only <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3125/>
 * GRIB detection not thread safe <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3209/>

GDAL:
 * GDALRasterizeLayers() and GDALRasterizeGeometries() segfault when passed invalid band numbers <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3146/>
 * Patch for HDF5 block size recognition <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2270/>
 * Gdal doesn't calculate stats correctly if it is negative number <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2511/>
 * ERS file pointing to an ECW file is not opening when a full path name is not specified <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2907/>
 * Keyword causing format unrecognized (PDS) <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2956/>
 * Add support for large NITF files <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2989/>
 * do not remove leading spaces after TRE=xxxx= metadata when writing them <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3088/>
 * [PATCH] TSX COSAR driver and 'pixel validity mask' <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3112/>
 * GDALDataset::BlockBasedRasterIO() does not use overviews <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3124/>
 * SIGBUS when reading A.TOC on Solaris <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3130/>
 * Cleanup of drivers when using ECW data  is very expensive <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3134/>
 * When PIXELTYPE=SIGNEDBYTE, band.GetStatistics returns wrong values <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3151/>
 * HFA doesn't support reading COMPRESSED + SIGNEDBYTE <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3152/>
 * undefined reference to ... error with gdalbuildvrt.cpp <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3167/>
 * variation on label to image pointer (PDS) <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3177/>
 * GDALGridCreate with NULL progress callback function <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3189/>
 * ERS driver fails with ERSs containing relative paths to non-ERStorage rasters <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3196/>
 * Wrong type casting in GDALGrid data metrics functions <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3207/>
 * HDF5 driver crashes with stackoverflow on this HDF5 image <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3218/>

Utilities:
 * Python utililities should support command-line wildcards <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2783/>
 * gdalbuildvrt -resolution lowest/highest does not work correcty for y pixel size <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3198/>
 * [PATCH] Part of the reprojected image is missing from GDAL 1.6.0 along 180E/180W longitude <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3206/>

OGR:
 * OGRLayer::GetFIDColumn() and GetGeometryColumn() just return empty strings from Python bindings <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2694/>
 * GML read failure for GDAL 1.6+ <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2948/>
 * GML reading problems with Xerces 3.x <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3156/>
 * OGRLayer::GetFeatureCount returns a wrong value for SOUNDG layer <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3163/>
 * XPlane driver causes fatal memory allocation in ogrinfo/ogr2ogr <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3164/>

Configuration:
 * libtool: /bin/sh: arg list too long (powerpc-ibm-aix5.3) <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3080/>
 * Error when building the gdal 1.6.2 for Linux <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3149/>

Python:
 * Add __version__ to python bindings <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3137/>
 * ReadRaster() crashes when GDAL is built with MinGW <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3173/>

OGR Spatial References:
 * EPSG:3785 does not support spherical mercator hack <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3136/>
 * Add 2 NZ coordinate system definition to mitab driver <http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3187/>