[GRASS-user] [osgeo4w-dev] QGIS 3.18.0 and QGIS 3.14.4 (LTR) packages released and OSGeo4W reboot (64 bit only)

[Helmut Kudrnovsky]

taken from the OSGeo4W ML
[https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/osgeo4w-dev/2021-February/004050.html]

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Hi there,

I'm happy to announce that the QGIS packages of 3.16.4 (LTR) 'Hannover' and
the
our latest release 3.18.0 'Zürich' are ready on
https://qgis.org/de/site/forusers/download.html.  This includes Linux, Mac
and
Windows packages.  With the availability of a new regular release the
current
long-term release 3.16 replaces the previous long-term release 3.10 in the
long
term package repositories.

The Windows standalone installer are as usual made from the OSGeo4W
packages.

In OSGeo4W there has lately been a big effort to reboot it, meaning that it
has 
been completely rebuilt using newer source versions of mostly every package 
using a newer compiler.  As this happened shortly before the QGIS release
the
new packages are still in a separate repository for testing.

You can install them using the osgeo4w installer on
http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/testing/osgeo4w-setup.exe (note the
testing -
the old installer will also work, if you point it to the new site, but it
will
default to the old).

Within the reboot a lot of old packages were dropped (including dependencies
to 
old microsoft runtimes), new packages were introduced and also package names
were revised.

Long story short: you cannot upgrade from old installs and have to remove
and
reinstall or use a separate directory.  As the new OSGeo4W only supports
64bit
the default root directory was changed to C:\OSGeo4W, which might help with
that if you were on 64bit earlier.

Also note that it now only has one version of Python - namely 3.9, which
doesn't support Windows 7 anymore.  Other updates include Qt 5.15, GDAL 3.2,
PROJ 7.2 and SAGA 7.8.

It also has PDAL 2.2 which is required for native support of point clouds in 
QGIS - something that you find lacking in the "old" OSGeo4W repository and
in
turn in the current standalones.

The new installer also doesn't require administrator privileges anymore.  
Unless you run it elevated (ie. as Administrator) the option to create 
shortcuts for all users will be unavailable.

The testing repository will eventually replace the old repository and also
be
used to make standalone installers.   As it has grown to exceed the 2GB
limit 
of NSIS the standalone installers will then be switched to MSI.

The package recipes currently reside at https://github.com/jef-n/OSGeo4W.

Please test and report packaging issues to the OSGeo4W TRAC at
https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w.

Jürgen
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-----
best regards
Helmut
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