[OSGeo-Discuss] Packaging an Integrated Geospatial Stack

[Frank Warmerdam]

Shorter, Cameron wrote:
> Frank,
> Your wiki is an excellent start.
> I think the next step is:

Cameron,

I'd add a point zero in this list which is get someone involved
to lead the effort (at least for a while).

> 1. Define specific user use cases for GIS software.
> Eg: A user has a shapefile and they want to display it to the public over
> the web using a basemap provided by someone else (eg Google).
> Ideally, we can get some users to help define the use cases, then fund the
> Geospatial Stack project.

I see two general user categories:

  1) desktop user, data visualization, analysis, etc.
  2) web application developer

Given the nature of our project set, I suspect I'd target
the web application developer first.  But I think the goal
is to include as many OSGeo projects as are practical rather
than just target a specific user need.

> 2. Identify a set of milestones for the software stack.
> Eg: Release 1:
> * Postgis database
> * Geoserver/Mapserver WMS/WFS
> * Mapbuilder/Mapbender WMS/WFS client
> 
> Release 2:
> Release 3: ...
> 
> 
> 3. Identify target platform and distribution medium.
> Eg: Ubuntu linux, get incorporated into the core Ubuntu linux distribution.

I have taken the position so far that on linux we should be
delivering a distribution agnostic software suite rather than
trying to produce stuff for each distribution.  For distribution
"integrated" solutions, I would suggest supporting existing
efforts (such as the Debian GIS effort) but what I invisage
from OSGeo is an "all included" suite that won't suffer from
package dependency hell, as I've seen with some many other
efforts.  In this regard, I see the effort being more like FGS
or FWTools than like Debian GIS or various efforts to provide
specific RPMs for particular versions of redhat/fedoracore.

On windows I would also aim for an all-included approach without
people having to separately download and install components.

> 4. Create a distribution project
> I think the distribution project should be treated in a similar manner to
> the other participating projects. It should contain email lists, bug
> trackers, Project Steering Committee etc.

I'd agree to a degree.  I'm not so sure it should go through incubation.
Or if it does, we can expect it to sit in incubation for quite some
time till it developers a community.  Actually, it sitting in incubation
for quite a while wouldn't be a terrible thing.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
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    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org