[gdal-dev] [Non-DoD Source] Re: Considering drivers removal ?

Mon Jan 11 13:24:20 PST 2021

I love FWTools. Still use it quite often.

I wish it was still actively maintained.

Shayne
________________________________
From: gdal-dev <gdal-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of jratike80 <jukka.rahkonen at maanmittauslaitos.fi>
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2021 11:55 AM
To: gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org <gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: [Non-DoD Source] Re: [gdal-dev] Considering drivers removal ?

Hi,

The joy of being a Windows user is that it is so easy to use old GDAL
versions if the binaries still happen to be on some dusty backup disk. Even
the FWTools including GDAL 1.7.0 from 2010 seemed to work fine and include
quite a many later removed drivers.

A few comments about the driver list:

- There are indeed questions about SVG in gis.stackexchange every now and
then.
- I used LAN a lot when FWTools was young and ERDAS wrote bad GeoTIFFs.
Things are probably changed since that.
- GMT is an active project and some GMT developers appear on this list as
well. Maybe some of them happend to read this and say if GMT ASCII vectors
are still important for GMT. Or otherwise I can ask from the GMT forum.
- GPS Track Maker, as far as I know, is quite popular in Brazil. However,
when I used the software I just used GPX format for data transfer. Are there
any Brazilian GDAL user here to comment?

When it comes to Windows binaries, there is a very valuable archive in
https://gisinternals.com/archive.php. It would be pity if it would get lost
some day.

-Jukka Rahkonen-

Even Rouault-2 wrote
> Hi,
>
> It's not spring yet, but I'm in a mood lately of axing useless things, and
> we
> probably have tons of candidate for that in GDAL, especially in drivers.
> I was going to just axe the DB2 driver
> (https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/pull/3366) but the issue is more general.
>
> Any idea how we can know what is used and what isn't ? A "call-home"
> functionality where we would track driver usage would only be acceptable
> if
> people enable it and have network connectivity, so we won't probably get
> lots
> of feedback. Having a spreadsheet with the driver list and asking people
> to
> fill it would probably also receive little feedback. So the idea I had was
> to
> do something like the following in the Open() method of a candidate for
> removal:
>
> GDALDataset* FooDriver::Open( .... )
> {
>    if( !Identify(poOpenInfo) )
>       return nullptr;
>
>    if( !CPLTestBool(CPLGetConfigOption("GDAL_ENABLE_DRIVER_FOO", "NO") )
>    {
>        CPLError(CE_Failure, CPLE_AppDefined,
>     "Driver FOO is considered for removal in GDAL 3.5. You are invited "
>     "to convert any dataset in that format to another more common one ."
>     "If you need this driver in future GDAL versions, create a ticket at "
>     "https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal (look first for an existing one first)
> to "
>     "explain how critical it is for you (but the GDAL project may still "
>     "remove it), and to enable it now, set the GDAL_ENABLE_DRIVER_FOO "
>     "configuration option / environment variable to YES");
>        return nullptr;
>     }
>     ...
> }
>
> That is, when we detect a file to be handled by the driver, emit the above
> error message and do not open the dataset, unless the user defines the
> environment variable.
> Similarly in the Create()/CreateCopy() methods.
> If we ship this in 3.3, with a 3.5 milestone for removal, this would offer
> a
> feedback period of one year / 2 feature versions.
>
> Here's my own list of candidates for retirement (probably
> over-conservative).
> Mostly based on gut feeling. None of them are particularly bad citizens,
> but I
> have no indication that they are still used, which doesn't mean they
> aren't.
>
> * Raster side:
> BPG
> DB2Raster
> DOQ1
> DOQ2
> E00GRID
> Epsilon
> FujiBAS
> GS7BG
> GSAG
> IDA
> JDEM
> JPEG2000 (Jasper): JP2OpenJPEG is a better replacement
> JPEGLS
> LAN
> MFF
> MG4Lidar ?
> NDF
> NTv1
> SDTS Raster
> SGI
> XPM
> ZMap
>
> * Vector side:
> AERONAVFAA
> ESRI ArcObjects
> ARCGEN
> BNA
> Cloudant
> CouchDB
> DB2
> DODS
> FMEObjects Gateway
> Geomedia MDB
> GMT ASCII Vectors
> GTM
> HTF
> INGRES
> MongoDB (the old one, superseded by MongoDBv3)
> OpenAIR
> REC
> SDTS
> SUA
> SVG
> TIGER
> WALK
>
>
> Anything you'd add / remove ?
>
> What is not obvious is what would be the criterion for keeping a driver:
> 1,
> 10, 100 users asking for the driver to be kept ?
> If a GDAL developer contributing to the overall good of the project needs
> the
> preservation of a driver to be able to justify its continued involvement,
> I'd
> tend to think it to be enough to keep it.
>
>
> Even
>
> --
> Spatialys - Geospatial professional services
> http://www.spatialys.com
> _______________________________________________
> gdal-dev mailing list

> gdal-dev at .osgeo

> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev

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