[gdal-dev] Important - GDAL 1.7.0 - Imagine/HFA Driver Produces Corrupt Files

[Howard Butler]

On Feb 4, 2010, at 10:49 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> Ivan has discovered that GDAL 1.7.0 is producing HFA files that are
> corrupt - that is they are only readable with GDAL.  Imagine and older
> versions of ArcGIS fail to read them.  The problem is described in:
> 
>  http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/3382
> 
> I consider this problem very serious, and the longer that GDAL 1.7.0
> is in use the more of these corrupt Imagine files will be produced and
> cause problems for the world.  For that reason, I would like to press
> ahead to produce a GDAL 1.7.1 release soon, and to mark GDAL 1.7.0 deprecated
> due to this serious bug.  Does anyone feel this is overkill?
> 
> Are there any other high priority fixes folks would like to see in a GDAL 1.7.1
> release?  I am thinking of preparing an RC on Monday if there is no objection.

+1.  Except for BigTIFF, the HFA driver is one of the consistent large file drivers we have.  Instead of marking it deprecated, I think we should retract the release (remove it from download.osgeo.org) and immediately issue 1.7.1 RC1 today.  1.7.0 hasn't been disseminated that widely, and a new release shouldn't be that disruptive to downstream packagers that are just starting to incorporate 1.7.

Was this just an issue of limited test coverage?

Howard