[gdal-dev] GDAL 3.9.0beta1 available for testing

[Even Rouault]

Hi,

I've prepared a beta1 of GDAL 3.9.0 to get feedback from early testers.

The NEWS file is here:

   https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/v3.9.0beta1/NEWS.md

For packagers, 
https://gdal.org/development/rfc/rfc96_deferred_plugin_loading.html may 
make it more attractive to build some drivers that typically have heavy 
dependencies as plugins, installable in separate packages, due to the 
load time penalty having being improved. It is let to the appreciation 
of packagers to decide which drivers are worth building as plugins 
installable in a separate package.
You may also pass CMake options 
([GDAL/OGR]_DRIVER_<driver_name>_PLUGIN_INSTALLATION_MESSAGE=xxx) so 
user get a hint of which package they need to install when GDAL detects 
that a file may be opened by a plugin which is not available on the file 
system but known to have been built as a plugin. Cf 
https://gdal.org/development/building_from_source.html#deferred-loaded-plugins 
for more details.

For end-users, the following utilities have been updated to use a new 
argument parsing framework: gdaladdo, gdalinfo, gdal_translate, 
gdalwarp, gdal_grid, gdal_viewshed, gdalbuildvrt, nearblack, ogrinfo, 
ogr2ogr, sozip.
This helps detecting errors such as specifying twice an argument that 
should be specified once (where generally the last instance was the one 
used). While we have tried to retain backwards compatibility for nominal 
use cases, obviously if you have scripts that accidentally specify an 
argument several times whereas it should be specified at most once, they 
will have to be corrected.

Docker images with 3.9.0beta1 are currently cooking.

master is now marked as 3.10.0dev, and the release/3.9 branch has been 
created. All bugfixes for 3.9 should be backported into it.

Source snapshots at:

- https://download.osgeo.org/gdal/3.9.0/gdal-3.9.0beta1.tar.gz
- https://download.osgeo.org/gdal/3.9.0/gdal-3.9.0beta1.tar.xz
- https://download.osgeo.org/gdal/3.9.0/gdal380beta1.zip

Autotest snapshots:

- https://download.osgeo.org/gdal/3.9.0/gdalautotest-3.9.0beta1.tar.gz
- https://download.osgeo.org/gdal/3.9.0/gdalautotest-3.9.0beta1.zip

Even

-- 
http://www.spatialys.com
My software is free, but my time generally not.