[gdal-dev] Motion: remove and deprecate a few drivers

[Robert Coup]

Hi Andrew,

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 08:59, Andrew C Aitchison <andrew at aitchison.me.uk>
wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Javier Jimenez Shaw wrote:
>
> > (using a docker image to convert any of those removed formats if you
> find a
> > file at the bottom of you cellar in the far future is a great
> alternative.
>
> I don't have a lot of confidence in being able to run an old docker image
> in the far future, especially if I don't have an x86 machine to run it on.
>
> https://medium.com/nttlabs/buildx-multiarch-2c6c2df00ca2
> suggests that docker images should be built "multi-arch"
> so that they run on x86 and the new ARM-based Apple Macs.



Who is going to rebuild and host the current GDAL docker like this?


Your question comes across as entitled — the answer is: whoever cares
enough to either do the work or pay someone to do it.

The source code is there, the release archives are staying, and it will be
possible to build an old release in the future which can read & convert a
file they find. Docker images provide a great *shortcut*, which means if
you find a file you can trivially convert it *without* building GDAL. I'm
sure eventually GDAL will produce multi-arch docker images, but that
shouldn't be a prerequisite for this deprecation/removal.

Debian 1.1 386 floppy disk images from 1996 are still available, and if you
have a m68000, sparc, a s390 or something else long-gone you can easily
find historic Linux release images with compilers which will happily run.
x86 will not disappear quickly, today's Linux kernel releases continue to
support 486s and they were discontinued over 13 years ago. GDALs source
code is also held in the Arctic Code Vault and other archival libraries
<https://archiveprogram.github.com/> — it's not going to disappear any time
soon.

Regards,

Rob :)
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