[Mapserver-users] MapServer 4.2.0 released

[Daniel Morissette]

On behalf of all the developers, I am pleased to announce that MapServer
4.2.0 has been released earlier last week. I'm sorry if this
announcement comes a bit late, I guess we just assumed that we didn't
need a formal announcement since we talked so much about the new release
on the list, but some questions that I've received recently have proven
me wrong.

This new release resolves several issues that were found in version 4.0,
and adds a bunch of enhancements and new features. The relevant portion
of the HISTORY.TXT is included below.

Users of 4.0 are encouraged to upgrade to 4.2 as it is a much more
stable in my opinion. The migration from 4.0 to 4.2 should be very easy:
there should not be any backwards compatibility issues contrary to what
some of you may have experienced when migrating from 3.6 to 4.0.

This release is available for download at the usual location on the UMN 
website:
   http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/dload.html

Windows binaries including PHP MapScript are also available on maptools.org:
   http://maptools.org/php_mapscript/index.phtml?page=downloads.html

And an update for the MS4W package (http://maptools.org/ms4w/) will also
be available soon.

Best Regards,

Daniel
------------------------------------------------------------
  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------


Version 4.2.0 (2004-05-25)
--------------------------

- Postgis: added "WHERE false" to query that looks up the schema for item
   queries.  This should greatly improve performance for complex queries.

- Mapscript: fixed the shape copy test in mapscript tests.

- Mapscript: replaced bad PNG file in tests with one that reads on win32.

- mapresample.c: Ensure background value is properly initialized in
   case of rgb or rgba resampled rasters.


Version 4.2-beta3 (2004-05-14)
------------------------------

- Fixed another write past end of buffer in INIMAGE WMS errors (bug 644)

- Removed "xbasewohoo" debug output when using JOINs and fixed a few
   error messages related to MySQL joins (bug 652)

- No more Python-stopping but otherwise benign errors raised from
   msDrawWMSLayer() (bug 650).

- Finished prototyping all MapServer functions used by SWIG-Mapscript
   and added 'void' to prototypes of no-arg functions, eliminating all
   but two SWIG-Mapscript build warnings (bug 658).

- Fixed mapwcs.c so that gdal.h and cpl_error.h are not included if
   USE_WCS_SVR is not enabled ... which is never is in 4.2.

- msBuildPath() no longer used with temporary filenames when saving images
   via GDAL.

- Bug 493: fix the raster cracking fix.  The last fix introduced a serious
   heap corruption / errant pointer problem in some render cases.

- Resolved issue with pens and dynamically drawing points (bug 663).

- Removed unused metadata gml_uri in WFS code (Bug 527)


Version 4.2-beta2 (2004-05-03)
------------------------------

- Map cloning fixed.  However, users must now set the cloned map's fontset
   and symbolset explicitly (see bug 557).  A new testcopy program has
   been added as a target for make.

- Fixed problem with PHP's pasteImage() method when angle=0

- Fixed build problem in mapresample.c when compiling without GDAL.

- Fixed possible crash when producing WMS errors INIMAGE (bug 644)

- Fixed automated generation of onlineresource in OWS GetCapabilities
   when the xxx_onlineresource metadata is not specified: the map= parameter
   used to be omitted and is now included in the default onlineresource if
   it was explicitly set in QUERY_STRING (bug 643)

- Fixed an issue with annotation label overlap. There was an issue with
   the way msRectToPolygon was computing it's bounding box. (bug 618)

- Fixed "raster cracking" problem (bug 493)


Version 4.2-beta1 (2004-04-17)
------------------------------

- Added support for WMS 1.1.1 in the WMS interface.

- Added support for WMS-SLD in client and server mode.

- Added support for attribute filters in the WFS interface.

- WMS Interface: several fixes to address issues found in running tests
   against the OGC testsuite. One of the side-effects is that incomplete
   GetMap requests that used to work in previous versions will produce
   errors now (see bug 622).

- Modified configure scripts to be able to configure/build PHP MapScript
   using an installed PHP instead of requiring the full source tree.

- Added ability to combine multiple WMS connections to the same server
   into a single request when the layers are adjacent and compatible.
(bug 116)

- Support POSTed requests without Content-Length set.

- Added support for proper classification of non-8bit rasters.

- Added support for BYTE rawmode output type.

- Added support for multiple bands of output in rawmode.

- MySQL joins available

- Fixed problems with detection of OGRRegisterAll() with GDAL 1.1.9 in
   configure due to GDAL's library name change. Fixed a few other minor
   issues with GDAL/OGR in configure.

- Modified configure to disable native TIFF/PNG/JPEG/GIF support by default
   if GDAL is enabled.  You can still enable them explicitly if you like.

- Replace wms_style_%s_legendurl, wms_logourl, wms_descriptionurl,
wms_dataurl
   and wms_metadataurl metadata by four new metadata by metadata
replaced. The
   new metadata are called legendurl_width, legendurl_height,
legendurl_format,
   legendurl_href, logourl_width, etc...
   Old dependancy to the metadata with four value in it , space
separated, are
   not kept.

- Implement DataURL, MetadataURL and DescriptionURL metadata in
   mapcontext.c (bug 523)

- PHP MapScript's pasteImage() now takes a hex color value (e.g. 0xrrggbb)
   for the transparent color instead of a color index. (bug 463)

- OGR data sources with relative paths are now checked relative to
   SHAPEPATH first, and if not found then we try again relative to the
   mapfile location.  (bug 295)

- There is a new mapObj parameter called MAXSIZE to control maximum image
   size to serve via the CGI and WMS interfaces. The default is 2048 as
   before but it can be changed in the map file now. (bug 435)

- Added simple dataset for unit and regression tests (bug 453)

- PostGIS: added postresql_NOTICE_HANDLER() sending output via msDebug()
   and only when layer->debug is set (bug 418)

- Added Apache version detection in configure and added non-blocking flag
   on stderr in msDebug() to work around Apache 2.x bug (bug 458)

- MapScript rectObj: added optional bounding value args to constructor and
   extended rectObj class with a toPolygon method (bug 508).

- MapScript pointObj: added optional x/y args to constructor (bug 508).

- MapScript colorObj: added optional RGB color value args to colorObj
   constructor, and extended colorObj class with setRGB, setHex, and toHex
   methods.  The *Hex methods use hex color strings like '#ffffff' rather
   than '0xffffff' for compatibility with HTML (bug 509).

- MapScript outputFormatObj: extended with a getOption method (bug 510).

- MapScript imageObj: added optional mapObj argument to the save method
   resolving bug 549 without breaking current API.  Also added optional
   driver and filename arguments to constructor which allows imageObj
   instances to be created with a specified driver or from files on disk
   (bug 530).  Added new code to Python MapScript which extends the
   filename option to Python file-like objects (bug 550). This means
   StringIO and urllib's network objects!

- MapScript classObj and styleObj: added a new styleObj shadow class and
   extended classObj with getStyle, insertStyle, and removeStyle methods.
   MapScript now supports multiple styles for dynamically created classes
   (bug 548).

- MapScript layerObj: added getExtent, getNumFeatures extension methods,
   allowing getShape to access inline features (bug 562).

- Added fixes for AMD64/Linux in configure (bug 565)

- Removed OGR_STATIC stuff in configure script that used to allow us to
   build with OGR statically by pointing to the OGR source tree.  That
   means you can only build with OGR when *installed* as part of GDAL,
   but that's what everyone is doing these days anyway.

- Mapscript outputFormatObj: extended constructor to allow format names,
   and mapObj methods to append and remove output formats from the
   outputformatlist (bug 511).

- New SWIG mapscript development documentation in the spirit of the
   PHP-Mapscript readme file, but using reST (bug 576).

- Paving way for future changes to SWIG mapscript API with new features
   enabled by NEXT_GENERATION_API symbol (bug 586).

- Added ability to set string member variables to NULL in PHP MapScript
   (bug 591)

- New key iterators for map, layer, and class metadata hash tables
   (bug 434) and fontset fonts hash table (bug 439).

- Fixed potential crash when using nquery with a querymap enabled and
   some layers have a template set at the layer level instead of inside
   classes (bug 569).

- New CONFIG keyword in the MAP object in a .map file to be used
   to set external configuration parameters such as PROJ_LIB and control
   of some GDAL and OGR driver behaviours (bug 619)