[mapserver-users] MapServer 3.6 beta1 release, and plan for 3.7

[Daniel Morissette]

Hi,

We have started getting ready for a 3.6 release of MapServer.  The CVS
tree has been branched as rel-3-6-0-beta1 as of April 30, and if things
go well then the plan would be to have a formal 3.6 release at the end
of the month.

I have prepared a copy of the 3.6-beta1 source that can be downloaded
from our download site:
  http://www2.dmsolutions.ca/mapserver/dl/mapserver-3.6.0-beta1.tar.gz

Please report problems with this version via the list as usual.  Windows
binaries for both mapserv (CGI) and PHP MapScript should be available
later this week.

Users migrating from 3.5 will be glad to hear that we have started
maintaining a HISTORY.TXT file where developers will document the main
changes between releases.  You can find it in the root of the source
package, and a copy of the HISTORY.TXT from the 3.6-beta1 version is
also available online at:
http://www2.dmsolutions.ca/mapserver/dl/mapserver-3.6.0-beta1-HISTORY.txt


As we mentioned on this list recently, there are some important changes
currently going on in the main development tree of MapServer in CVS, so
the main CVS trunk (3.7 dev) is likely to be unstable or even completely
unusable at some points in the next month or so as major changes will be
made, including:

 - Architecture changes to support vector output, including 
   implementations for SWF, PDF and GML.
 - Support for GD 2.0 (24 bits output)
 - Support for output to any GDAL-supported raster format
 - Changes to set class parameters via a new (more flexible) styleObj
 - WFS client and server (read-only, i.e. non-transactional)

There is probably more that will get added as we go, but these are the
main items that I aware of for now.  We would like to aim for a 3.7
release around July, but this date is not set in stone and may very well
change.

Once again, as those changes take place, the main CVS trunk is likely to
be unstable so you are strongly encouraged to stick to release 3.6 until
we announce that 3.7-dev (in CVS) is ready to play with.

Best Regards,
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
 Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca
 DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------
  Don't put for tomorrow what you can do today, because if 
      you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.