[GRASS5] status of libgrass, mapserver, gdal and >8bit rasters

[Frank Warmerdam]

Markus Neteler wrote:
> Frank,
> 
> a quick look into libgrass showed that a few (!) functions have
> been added to libgrass with respect to the original libgis, libdatetime etc.
> 
> grep G_ gdal/frmts/grass/grassdataset.cpp | cut -d'G' -f2 | cut -d'(' -f1 |\
>    sed 's+^+G+g' |grep G_ | sort -u
> x       G_check_cell            - opencell2.c
>         G_close_cell
>         G_free
>         G_free_colors
> x       G_get_cell_as_proj4     - get_proj4_def.c
>         G_get_cellhd
>         G_get_color
>         G_get_fp_range_min_max
>         G_get_null_value_row
>         G_get_raster_row
> x       G_gisinit_2             - gisinit2.c
>         G_open_cell_old
>         G_read_colors
>         G_read_fp_range
>         G_set_error_routine
>         G_set_window
> ---------------
> x: 3 new functions in libgrass


Markus,

Yes, it has always been my intention that libgrass would be superceeded
by shared libraries from GRASS itself.  To do so, we would need to migrate
the functions added in libgrass to libgis (or somewhere else appropriate),
and perhaps work out a few issues to limit the amount of code an application
needs to link in to get GRASS support.

Note, the additions in libgrass were conceived of to make GRASS translators
easier to write and would apply to other targets than just GDAL.  So I think
libgis would be the ideal eventual place for them.

> This would probably simplify everybodies life as
> - you (someone else) don't have to maintain libgrass any more
> - always latest libgis etc are used as taken from GRASS directly
> - user need only GDAL and GRASS (the latter should be mostly
>   present as the user somehow has to create the GRASS DB when linking
>   MapServer to it)
> 
> I also think that we should release the GRASS libraries as stand-alone
> package in future (probably with GRASS++ libs, let's jump into the license
> discussion again...) to add more flexibility in GRASS packaging.

What is less clear to me (because I haven't been staying on top of GRASS status)
is whether we should be doing this work in 5.3 or 5.7. Does 5.3 overhaul the
build system and used shared libraries for libgis or is that only in 5.7?

I would add I don't forsee having time to work on this in the immediate future.
I see it more as an eventual objective.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent