[gdal-dev] GDAL 3.10.2 release candidate available

[Roger Bivand]

R-spatial for macOS static builds have run into a serious roadblock at 
3.10.1, so maybe an early 3.10.2 could assist us.

Until recently, static macOS builds of GDAL were using 3.5.3. Simon 
Urbanek (https://github.com/R-macos/recipes) has just converted the recipe 
for GDAL to cmake, and things were looking positive for 3.10.1, until we 
realised that:

-- Found CURL: 
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX11.3.sdk/usr/lib/libcurl.tbd 
(found version "7.64.1")
[...]
  checking whether CURLOPT_USERNAME is defined... yes
  checking whether CURLOPT_PASSWORD is defined... yes
  checking whether CURLOPT_KEYPASSWD is defined... yes
  checking whether CURLINFO_RESPONSE_CODE is defined... yes
  checking whether CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE is defined... yes
  checking whether CURLOPT_TCP_KEEPALIVE is defined... yes
  checking whether libcurl is version 7.66 or later?... no

so CURL is available but the MacOSX11.3.sdk version is insufficient - 
macOS 11.3 is the mandated build platform for R and R packages to 
accommodate most Darwin systems from older to newest.

Building GDAL on the cmake step says:

CURL component has been detected, but is disabled with GDAL_USE_CURL=OFF

during the building of GDAL itself, leading to errors in downstream R 
software:

GDAL/OGR not compiled with libcurl support, remote requests not supported.

in sf and terra if opening resources via URL, and in potentially all the 
1000+ packages using sf and terra. So unless this can be resolved, we'll 
probably have to go back to the last GDAL version not requiring >= 7.66 or 
whatever the threshold is and when it was changed.

On the macOS side, it isn't practicable to upgrade the system library for 
distribution to many users.

Is it possible to (optionally) specify a minimum CURL version of 7.64 say 
when calling cmake in GDAL 3.10? If there is no such possibility now, 
could it be added to 3.10.2 (RC2)? Where should I look to try to add a 
prototype change?

I didn't see a mention of the tightening of the CURL version requirement 
in the NEWS entries, but probably I'm looking in the wrong place.

Best wishes,

Roger

-- 
Roger Bivand
Emeritus Professor
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway.
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no