MapServer 4.4.0 released

[Cord Thomas]

Great news.

Keep up the good work.

Cord

> Good evening,
>
> The MapServer 4.4.0 release is now officially available, thanks to the
> hard work of everyone involved.
>
> Here is a very quick summary of what's new in version 4.4:
>
> * Added WCS support (server only)
>
> * Added support for Time dimension in WMS
>
> * Lots of fixes/improvements to the OGC WMS and WFS interfaces (too many
> to list here). MapServer 4.4 passes all the tests of the OGC WMS 1.1.1
> test suite and is ready to be certified (Formal "WMS Compliance"
> certification with OGC is in the works).
>
> * Added FastCGI support
>
> * Lots of fixes to allow running in long-lived processes and
> multithreaded environments (memory leaks, mutex locking, etc.).
>
> * Added connection pooling (implemented for SDE and PostGIS).
>
> * Lots of improvements to SWIG MapScript API and docs.
>
> * Support for i18n encodings in map labels. Tested with Chinese,
> Japanese and Thai.
>
> * Added ability to produce rotated maps (i.e. North is not at the top)
>
> * Completion of SDE versioned query support
>
> ... and many many more fixes and enhancements. See the HISTORY.TXT that
> comes with the source package for the complete list (relevant parts
> included below).
>
> The source code package is available for download on the MapServer
> download page at http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/dload.html and the default
> documentation pages should be switched to use version 4.4 documents
> shortly.
>
> Windows binaries should also be available shortly at the usual
> locations. I would invite those producing prebuilt binaries to please
> reply to this email and announce the availability of their binaries and
> their URL.
>
> As we've done for previous releases, we will produce 4.4.x bugfix
> releases as required in the coming months. With respect to 4.2.x: we
> will not produce any more 4.2.x releases unless major issues (e.g.
> security issues) are ever found in 4.2.5.
>
> What about the next release? The consensus seems to be to aim for a 4.6
> release in the next 4-6 months. There are no major changes or new
> features planned for 4.6 at this point, mostly improvements of existing
> features. We'll try to document our plan for 4.6 and share it with this
> list when it's available.
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Daniel
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>   Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
>   DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> Complete list of changes since 4.2 (excerpt from HISTORY.TXT)
>
>
> Version 4.4.0 (2004-11-29)
> --------------------------
>
> - Fixed WMS GetCapabilities 1.1.0 crash when wms_style_<...>_legendurl_*
>    metadata were used (bug 1096)
>
> - WCS GetCapabilities : Added ResponsibleParty support.
>
> - WMS GetCapabilities : Service online resource was not url encoded (bug
> 1093)
>
> - Fixed php mapscript problem with wfs_filter selection : Bug 1092.
>
> - Fixed encoding problem with WFS server when wfs_service_onlineresource
>    was not explicitly specified (bug 1082)
>
> - Add trailing "?" or "&" to connection string when required in WFS
>    client layers using GET method (bug 1082)
>
> - Fixed : SLD rasters was failing when there was Spatial Filter (Bug 1087)
>
> - Fixed mapwfslayer.c build error when WFS was not enabled (bug 1083)
>
> - Check that we have vsnprintf in mapimagemap.c before using it.
>
>
> Version 4.4.0-beta3 (2004-11-22)
> --------------------------------
>
> - Added tests to mimimize the threat of recursion problems when evaluating
>    LAYER REQUIRES or LABELREQUIRES expressions. Note that via MapScript it
>    is possible to circumvent that test by defining layers with problems
>    after running prepareImage. Other things crop up in that case too
> (symbol
>    scaling dies) so it should be considered bad programming practice
>    (bug 1059).
>
> - Added --with-sderaster configure option.
>
> - Make sure that msDrawWMSLayerLow calls msDrawLayer instead of
>    msDrawRasterLayerLow directly ensuring that some logic (transparency)
> that
>    are in msDrawLayer are applied (bug 541).
>
> - Force GD/JPEG outputFormatObjects to IMAGEMODE RGB and TRANSPARENT OFF
>    if they are RGBA or ON.  Makes user error such as in bug 1703 less
> likely.
>
> - Advertize only gd and gdal formats for wms capabilities (bug 455).
>
> - Pass config option GML_FIELDTYPES=ALWAYS_STRING to OGR so that all GML
>    attributes are returned as strings to MapServer. This is most efficient
>    and prevents problems with autodetection of some attribute types (bug
> 1043).
>
> - msOGCWKT2ProjectionObj() now uses the
> OGRSpatialReference::SetFromUserInput()
>    method.  This allows various convenient setting options, including the
>    ability to handle ESRI WKT by prefixing the WKT string with "ESRI::".
>
> - Fixed GetLegendGraphic in WMS Capabilities that were missing the '?'
>    or '&' separator if it was not included in wms_onlineresource (bug
> 1065).
>
> - Updated WMS/WFS client and server code to lookup "ows_*" metadata names
>    in addition to the default "wms_*" (or "wfs_*") metadatas (WCS was
> already
>    implemented this way). This reduces the amount of duplication in
> mapfiles
>    that support multiple OGC interfaces since "ows_*" metadata can be used
>    almost everywhere for common metadata items shared by multiple OGC
>    interfaces (bug 568).
>
> - Added ows_service_onlineresource metadata for WMS/WFS to distinguish
>    between service and GetMap/Capabilities onlineresources (bug 375).
>
> - Added map->setSize() to PHP MapScript (bug 1066).
>
> - Re-enabled building PHP MapScript using PHP's bundled regex/*.o. This is
>    needed to build in an environment with PHP configured as an Apache DSO
>    (bugs 990, 520).
>
> - Fixed problem with raster dither support on windows (related to ascii
>    encoding pointers) (bug 722).
>
> - Moved PHP/SWIG MapScript layer->getExtent() logic down to
> msLayerGetExtent()
>    to avoid code duplication (bug 1051).
>
> - Added SDE Raster drawing support (experimental).
>
> - HTML legends: Added [leg_header_html] and [leg_footer_html] (bug 1032).
>
> - Added "z" support in SWIG MapScript for pointObj (bug 871).
>
> - In PHP Mpascript when using  ms_newrectobj, the members minx, miny,
>    maxx, maxy are initialized to -1 (bug 788).
>
> - Write out proper world file with remote WMS result, it was off by half
>    a pixel (bug 1050).
>
> - Send a warning in the wms capabilities if the layer status is set
>    to default (bug 638).
>
> - Fixed PHP MapScript compile warnings: dereferencing type-punned pointer
>    will break strict-aliasing rules (bug 1053).
>
> - Added $layer->isVisible() to PHP MapScript (bug 539).
>
> - Ported $layer->getExtent() to PHP MapScript (bug 826).
>
> - wms_group_abstract can now be used in the capabilities (bug 754).
>
> - If wms_stylelist is an empty string, do not output the <StyleList> tag
>    for MapContexts (bug 595).
>
> - Avoid passing FILE* to GD library by utilizing GD's gdIOCtx interface
>    (bug 1047).
>
> - Output warning in wms/wfs capabilities document if layer,group,map
> names have
>    space in them (bug 486, bug 646).
>
> - maporaclespatial.c: fixed declarations problems (bug 1044).
>
> - Allow use of msOWSPrintURLType with no metadata. In this case the
> default
>    parameters will be used (bug 1001).
>
> - Ensure the outputFormatObj attached to msImageLoadGDStream() results
> reflect
>    the interlacedness of the loaded image.  Also ensure that the RGB PNG
>    reference images work (make imagemode match gdImg) (bug 1039).
>
> - Fixed support for non-square pixels in WCS (bug 1014).
>
> - Expose only GD formats for GetLegendGraphic in the capabilities (bug
> 1001).
>
> - Check for supported formats when process a GetLegendGraphic request
>    (bug 1030).
>
> - mapraster.c: fixed problem with leaks in tileindexed case where the
>    tile index is missing (bug 713).
>
> - Oracle Spatial: implemented connection pool support for Oracle Spatial.
>    New layer data parameters to support query functions, added
>    "using unique <column name>".  Added "FILTER", "RELATE" and
> "GEOMRELATE"
>    parameters, now permit users to choose the Oracle Spatial Filter.
> Modified
>    the internal SQL to always apply FILTER function. And improve the
> Oracle
>    Spatial performance.
>
> - Centralize "stdout binary mode setting" for win32 in
> msIO_needBinaryStdout().
>    Use it when writing GDAL files to stdout in mapgdal.c.  Fixes
> problems with
>    output of binary files from GDAL outputformat drivers on win32 via
> WMS/WCS.
>
> - MapServer now provides one default style named (default), title and
>    LegendURL when generating capabilities.  Added also the possibility
> to use
>    the keyword default for STYLES parameter when doing a GetMap
>    (..&STYLES=default,defeault,...) (bug 1001).
>
> - Add xlink:type="simple" in WMS MetadataURL (bug 1027).
>
>
> Version 4.4.0-beta2 (2004-11-03)
> --------------------------------
>
> - free mapServObj properly in mapserv.c in OWS dispatch case to fix minor
>    memory leaks.
>
> - modified msCloseConnections() to also close raster layers so that
>    held raster query results will be freed.
>
> - modified raster queries to properly set the classindex in the
> resultcache.
>
> - modified msDrawQueryCache() to be very careful to not try and lookup
>    information on out-of-range classindex values.  This seems to occur
> when
>    default shapes come back witha classindex of 0 even if there are no
> classes.
>    (ie. raster query results).
>
> - the loadmapcontext function has changed it behaviour.  Before the 4.4
> relase
>    when loading layers from a map context, the layer name was built using
>    a unique prefix + the name found in the context (eg for the 2nd layer
> in
>    map context named park, the layer name generated would possibly be
> l:2:park).
>    Now the loadmapcontext takes a 2nd optional argument to force the
> creation
>    of the unique names. The default behaviour is now to have the layer
> name
>    equals to the name found in the context file (bug 1023).
>
> - Fixed problem with WMS GetCapabilities aborting when wms_layer_group is
>    used for some layers but not for all (bug 1024).
>
> - Changed raster queries to return the list of all pixel values as an
>    attribute named "value_list" rather than "values" to avoid conflict
> with
>    special [values] substitution rule in maptemplate.c.
>
> - Fixed raster queries to reproject results back to map projection, and to
>    do point queries distance checking against the correct projection
> (bug 1021).
>
> - Get rid of WMS 1.0.8 support. It's not an officially supported verison
>    of the spec anyway: it's synonymous for 1.1.0 (bug 1022).
>
> - Allow use of '=' inside HTML template tag parser (bug 978).
>
> - Use metadata ows_schema_location for WMS/WFS/WCS/SLD (bugs 999, 1013,
> 938).
>    The default value if metadata is not found is
>    http://schemas.opengeospatial.net.
>
> - Generate a RULE <Name> tag when generating an SLD (bug 1010).
>
> - WMS GetLegendGraphic uses now the RULE value to return an icon for
>    a class that has the same name as the RULE value (bug 843).
>
> - Add msOWSPrintURLType: This funciton is a generic URL printing fuction
> for
>    OGC specification metadata (WMS, WFS, WCS, WMC, etc.) (bug 944).
>
> - Support MetadataURL, DataURL and LegendURL tags in WMS capabilities
>    document and MetadataURL in WFS capabilities.
>
> - SWIG mapscript: clone methods for layerObj, classObj, styleObj (bug
> 1012).
>
> - Implemented an intarray helper class for SWIG mapscript which allows for
>    multi-language manipulation of layer drawing order (bugs 853, 1005).
>
> - Fixed WMS GetLegendGraphic which was returning an exception (GD error)
>    when requested layer was out of scale (bug 1006).
>
> - Fixed maplexer.l to work with flex 2.5.31 (bug 975).
>
> - WMS GetMap requests now have MS_NONSQUARE enabled by default. This means
>    that if the width/height ratio doesn't match the extent's x/y ratio
> then
>    the map is stretched as stated in the WMS specification (bug 862).
>
> - In WMS, layers with no explicit projection defined will receive a copy
>    of the map's projectionObj if a new SRS is specified in the GetMap
> request
>    or if MS_NONSQUARE is enabled. This will prevent the problem with
> layers
>    that don't show up in WMS request when the server administrator forgets
>    to explicitly set projections on all the layers in a WMS mapfile (bug
> 947).
>
> - Implemented FastCGI cleanup support for win32 and unix in mapserv.c.
>
> - Solved configure/compile issues with libiconv (bugs 909, 1017).
>
>
> Version 4.4.0-beta1 (2004-10-21)
> --------------------------------
>
> - "shared" compilation target now supports some kind of versioning,
>    should at least prevent libmap.so version collisions when upgrading
>    MapServer on a server (bug 982).
>
> - When no RULE parameter has been specified in the WMS request
>    a legend should be returned with all classes for the specified LAYER.
>    Changes has been made in mapwms.c (bug 653). Also if the SCALE
> parameter
>    is provided in the WMS request is will be used to determine whether
>    the legend of the specified layer should be drawn in the case that the
>    layer is scale dependant (big 809).
>
> - Nested layers in the capabilities are supported by using a new metadata
>    tag WMS_LAYER_GROUP (bug 776).
>
> - Added greyscale+alpha render support if mapdrawgdal.c (bug 965).
>
> - Added --with-fastcgi support to configure.
>
> - support OGC mapcontext through mapserver cgi (bug 946).
>
> - support for reading 3d shape file (z) (bug 869).
>
> - add php mapscript functions to expose the z element (bug 870).
>
> - imageObj::write() method for SWIG mapscript (bug 941).
>
> - Protect users from 3 potential sources of threading problems: parsing
>    expression strings outside of msLoadMap, evaluating mapserver logical
>    expressions, and loading symbol set files outside of msLoadMap (bug
> 339).
>
> - Various fixes allowing unit tests to run leak free under valgrind on
>    i686.  Memory is now properly freed when exiting from common error
>    states (bug 927).
>
> - Restored ability to render transparent (indexed or alpha) pixmap symbols
>    on RGB map images, including annotation layers and embedded scalebars.
>    This feature remains OFF by default for map layers and is enabled by
>    specifying TRANSPARENCY ALPHA (bugs 926, 490).
>
> - mapserv_fcgi.c removed.  Committed new comprehensive FastCGI support.
>
> - New mapserver exceptions for Java mapscript thanks to Umberto Nicoletti
>    (bug 895).
>
> - Removed mapindex.c, mapindex.h, shpindex.c components of old unused
>    shapefile indexing method.
>
> - Use the symbol size instead of 1 for the default style size value. This
> is
>    done by setting the default size to -1 and adding
> msSymbolGetDefaultSize()
>    everywhere to get the default symbolsize (Bug 751).
>
> - Correct Bug with GML BBOX output when using a <Filter> with a
>    GetFeature request (Bug 913).
>
> - Encode all metadatas and mapfile parameters outputed in a xml document
>    (Bug 802).
>
> - Implement the ENCODING label parameter to support internationalization.
>    Note this require the iconv library (Bug 858).
>
> - New and improved Java mapscript build provided by unicoletti at prometeo.it
>    and examples by Y.K. Choo (bug 876).
>
> - MapContext: Cleanup code to make future integration more easily and
> output
>    SRS and DataURL in the order required by the spec.
>
> - Fixed issue with polygon outline colors and brush caching (bug 868).
>
> - New C# mapscript makefiles and examples provided by Y.K. Choo
>    <ykchoo at geozervice.com> committed under mapscript/csharp/ (bug 867).
>
> - Renamed 'string' member of labelCacheMemberObj to 'text' to avoid
>    conflicts in SWIG mapscript with C# and Java types (bug 852).
>
> - Fixed Bug 866 : problem when generating an sld on a pplygon layer
>
> - SWIG mapscript: map's output image width and height should be set
>    simultaneously using new mapObj::setSize() method.  This performs
>    necessary map geotransform computation.  Direct setting of map width
>    and height is deprecated (bug 836).
>
> - Fixed bug 832 (validate srs value) : When the SRS parameter in a GetMap
>    request contains a SRS that is valid for some, but not all of the
> layers
>    being requested, then the server shall throw a Service Exception
>    (code = "InvalidSRS"). Before this fix, mapserver use to reproject
>    the layers to the requested SRS.
>
> - Fixed bug 834: SE_ROW_ID in SDE not initialized for unregistered SDE
> tables
>
> - Fixed bug 823 : adding a validation of the SRS parameter when doing
>    a GetMap request on a wms server. Here is the OGC statement :
>    'When the SRS parameter in a GetMap request contains a SRS
>    that is valid for some, but not all of the layers being requested,
>    then the server shall throw a Service Exception (code = "InvalidSRS").'
>
> - Set the background color of polygons or circles when using transparent
>    PIXMAP symbol.
>
> - SWIG mapscript class extensions are completely moved from mapscript.i
>    into separate interface files under mapscript/swiginc.
>
> - Overhaul of mapscript unit testing framework with a comprehensive test
>    runner mapscript/python/tests/runtests.py.
>
> - Modified the MS_VALID_EXTENT macro to take an extent as its argument
>    instead of the quartet of members. MapServer now checks that extents
> input
>    through the mapfile are valid in mapfile.c (web, map, reference,
>    and layer).  Modified msMapSetExtent in mapobject.c to use the new
>    macro instead of its home-grown version. Modified all cases that used
>    MS_VALID_EXTENT to the new use case.
>
> - Layers now accept an EXTENT through the mapfile (bug 786). Nothing
>    is done with it at this point, and getExtent still queries the
>    datasource rather than getting information from the mapfile-specified
>    extent.
>
> - Fixed problem with WMS GetFeatureInfo when map was reprojected. Was a
>    problem with msProjectRect and zero-size search rectangles (bug 794)
>
> - MapServer version now output to mapscriptvars and read by Perl
> Makefile.PL
>    and Python setup.py (bug 795).
>
> - Map.web, layer, and class metadata are exposed in SWIG mapscript as
>    first-class objects (bug 737).
>
> - Add support for spatial filters in the SLD (Bug 782)
>
> - A few fixes to allow php_mapscript to work with both PHP4 and PHP5.
>    PHP5 support should still be considered experimental. (bug 718)
>
> - Fixed SDE only recognizing SE_ROW_ID as the unique column (bug 536).
>    The code now autosenses the unique row id column.
>
> - Enhanced SDE support to include support for queries against
>    user-specified versions.  The version name can be specified as the
>    last parameter of the CONNECTION string.
>
> - 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 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)
>
> - Removed "xbasewohoo" debug output when using JOINs and fixed a few
>    error messages related to MySQL joins (bug 652)
>
> - Fixed "raster cracking" problem (bug 493)
>
> - Improvements to Makefile.vc, and nmake.opt so that a mapscriptvars file
>    can be produced on windows.
>
> - Updated setup.py so Python MapScript builds on win32.
>
> - Added preliminary raster query support.
>
> - 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).
>
> - Mapscript: resolved issue with pens and dynamic drawing of points (bug
> 663).
>
> - Mapscript: fixes to tests of shape copying and new image symbols.
>
> - Mapscript: new OWSRequest class based on cgiRequestObj structure in
>    cgiutil.h is a first step to allow programming with MapServer's OWS
>    dispatching (bug 670).
>
> - Mapscript: styles member of classObj structure is no longer exposed to
>    SWIG (bug 611).
>
> - Implementation geotransform/rotation support in cgi core, and
> mapscript.i.
>
> - Testing: fixed syntax error, 'EPSG' -> 'epsg' in test.map (bug 687).
>    Added an embedded scalebar which demonstrates that bug 519 is fixed.
>    The test data package is also made more complete by including two fonts
>    from Bitstream's open Vera fonts (bug 694).
>
> - Mapscript (SWIG): remove promote and demote methods from layerObj.  Use
>    of container's moveLayerUp/moveLayerDown is better, and this brings
>    the module nearer to PHP-Mapscript (bug 692).
>
> - mapogr.cpp: Now echos CPLGetLastErrorMsg() results if OGR open fails.
>
> - mapraster.c: fixed tile index corruption problem (bug 698)
>
> - Mladen Turk's map copying macros in mapcopy.h clean up map cloning and
>    allow for copying of fontset and symbolset.  Added cloning tests in
>    python/tests/testCloneMap.py and refactored testing suite (bugs 640 &
> 701).
>
> - Mapscript: removing obsolete python/setup_wnone.py file.
>
> - CONFIG MS_NONSQUARE YES now enables non-square pixel mode (mostly for
> WMS).
>    Changes in mapdraw.c (msDrawMap()) to use the geotransform "hack" to
> allow
>    non-square pixels.
>
> - When using the text/html mime type in a GetFeature request, if the
>    layer's template is not set to a valid file, errors occur.
>    Correction is : the text/html is not advertized by default and
>    will only be advertized if the user has defined
>    "WMS_FEATURE_INFO_MIME_TYPE"  "text/html" (bug 736)
>
> - Make PHP MapScript's layer->open() produce a PHP Warning instead of a
>    Fatal error (bug 742)
>
> - MapServer hash tables are now a structure containing a items pointer
>    to hashObj. See maphash.h for new prototypes of hash table functions.
>    In SWIG mapscript, Map, Layer, and Class metadata are now instances
> of the
>    new hashTableObj class.  fontset.fonts and Map.configoptions are also
>    instances of hashTableObj.  The older getMetaData/setMetaData and
>    metadata iterator methods can be deprecated (bug 737).
>
> - Mapscript-SWIG: made the arguments of mapObj and layerObj constructors
>    optional.  A layerObj can now exist outside of a map and can be added
>    to a mapObj using the insertLayer method.  mapObj.removeLayer now
>    returns a copy of the removed Layer rather than an integer (bug 759).
>
> - Fixed $map->processTemplate() which was always returning NULL.
>    Bug introduced in version 4.0 in all flavours of MapScript (bug 410)
>
>
> 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)
>