[Liblas-devel] Motion: libLAS 0.9.0 Release

[Howard Butler]

All,

I think we are ready to provide a preview release of libLAS so that we  
can get some feedback from actual users :)  I propose that we call it  
0.9.0.  I did not see a version on Martin's LASTools stuff that we  
could use to start counting from, but maybe he will chime in.

In the summer of 2007, I was approached by the Iowa Department of  
Natural Resources to investigate a graduate student effort to develop  
a library that reads and writes LAS-formated LiDAR data.  The code  
that was available was in tough shape (you can find this in the carver- 
start branch of the subversion tree), and it looked like bringing it  
into shape would be a significant effort.

After some investigation, I found Martin's LASTools, which looked to  
be substantially more developed than the original IDNR code,  
especially with respect to the command line utilities that it  
provided.  It was slightly deficient from a library perspective (it  
was merely a couple of C++ classes), but with some elbow grease and  
first-rate C++ mojo from Mateusz, it could be brought together.  After  
contacting Martin, Mateusz and I agreed to push forward with the  
library side of LASTools development.

Regarding the naming of the library: there was already a "lastools"  
website that purported to be a commercial development, and my original  
vision for the software project was more of an open source library  
approach.  liblas.org was available, so that was the name that was  
chosen.

Infrastructure-wise, the project now has a mailing list, subversion  
repository, bug tracker, and IRC bot and channel.  All of these pieces  
are critical to support collaboration of geographically diverse  
contributors to the project.  They also allow a motivated individual  
to bootstrap themselves into participating in the project with minimal  
effort.

libLAS currently supports multiple platforms, and it has been tested  
on Mac OSX 10.5, Ubuntu 7.10, and Windows MSVC 2005/2008.  automake/ 
autoconf, cmake, and msvc makefiles and project files are available to  
build the library and utilities.

Development-wise, the library APIs have started to settle down, and  
most of Martin's command line utilities have been ported over to use  
the libLAS C API (txt2las and lasdiff are not complete yet).    The  
only major piece of missing functionality is variable length headers,  
but that should be coming shortly.  Mateusz has a good start on C++  
unit tests, and with the C API solidifying, I should be able to start  
working on some Python bindings.

I would like to motion for a 0.9.0 (or otherwise appropriately named  
release given input from Martin) release to allow us to solicit  
feedback and allow people to easily test.

Howard