[pdal] Tagged releases for Hexer and Nitro

[Howard Butler]

On Jan 29, 2014, at 11:26 AM, Larry Shaffer <larrys at dakotacarto.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> First off, thanks for all your work on PDAL. I especially look forward to trying out the new Postgres/PostGIS integration.

Paul Ramsey did all the Postgres work. I have done some work recently to speed up the Postgresql stuff with some surprising results. I hope to cook up an email to the list or update the pg docs for posterity in the future on that item once I'm done. 

> 
> After a recent (and ongoing) discussion about somehow integrating LiDAR data into QGIS on the QGIS-dev mailing list [0], I went about revamping the minimal Mac Homebrew PDAL formula [1] to include many more options [2] and added formulae for Hexer [3] and Nitro [4].

I have joined the list and when more questions come up about PDAL, I'd be happy to join in. I must admit that PDAL is intended to be useful for GUI developers, but only in the sense of a data access/translation and light duty processing library. In practice, it is very possible there are sticky points for people looking to use PDAL inside of GUI apps due to the fact that most of my development is focused on processing/translation pipelines rather than feeding data to a window. That said, I hope it to be useful for those tasks, and as more people jump in and start using PDAL, I expect that aspect of it to get beefier.

I read on the lists logs about some questions about libLAS, LASlib, and PDAL. I hope to clarify some of that murkiness. PDAL is the successor to libLAS, which itself was a reaction to LASlib not being available under an open source license at the time. libLAS is essentially a maintenance-only library at this time, and PDAL contains nearly all the functionality that libLAS had, except for the ability to manipulate LAS data with Python. That feature's now covered much better by http://www.laspy.org.  PDAL is very much intended to be like GDAL except in the point cloud format domain. LASlib is now straight LGPL and has a fantastic toolbox of functionality that is poorly integrated into existing systems. It also has no release mechanism, github repository, or other open source accouterments.  PDAL aims to stay out of LASlib's niche to provide data access and format translation as its primary capability.

> 
> Currently, Hexer and Nitro do not have any tagged releases. This presents a roadblock for submitting their formulae upstream to the main Homebrew repository (aka a 'tap'), since one of the 'acceptable formula' criteria is that the formula not be HEAD-only. From the CMakeLists.txt for Hexer I see it is set to a 1.0.1 version, while Nitro appears to be at 2.7 (?). 

PDAL is *very* close to a 1.0.0 release. I have a few more items that I want to clean up before I release 1.0.0 and signal that I'm interested in folks coming along for real and kicking the tires. I appreciate the PDAL homebrew update. I had been meaning to do that but have't had time yet.

I'll create a hexer 1.0.1 tag today and make sure that the CMake configuration is up to date with it.

Nitro is not something that is generally needed. Nitro is for reading NITF files, and there is a DoD lidar format that stores LAS files inside of NITF containers (it is as awful as you think it would be). The PDAL Nitro configuration is for that specific format. I don't know how generally useful it would be. The Nitro fork that I maintain is due to the fact that the maintainer wasn't interested in either collaborating on github or in cmake configuration for the library. I do not wish to materially fork the library in any way except to make the integration easier with my own CMake-based metabuild system.


> Could you possibly tag both of those repos so that those formula can be submitted upstream?
> 
> 
> Btw, any input to the QGIS-dev mailing list on how PDAL might be used with QGIS would be appreciated. The three main options would be: via GDAL support, as a separate data provider, and/or utilizing its command line utilities via the Processing plugin provider.

I'll be happy to answer a question on that via the qgis list.

> 
> The Processing plugin provider is straightforward to do, as it only requires modest Python scripting to implement [5]. LASTools and Fusion have been incorporated already [6], but they are basically Windows-only utilities, having very limited functionality on other platforms.
> 
> 
> [0] http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Lidar-data-into-QGIS-td5100547.html
> 
> [1] https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/pdal.rb
> [2] https://github.com/dakcarto/homebrew-osgeo4mac/blob/master/Formula/pdal.rb (work in progress)
> [3] https://github.com/dakcarto/homebrew-osgeo4mac/blob/master/Formula/hexer.rb
> [4] https://github.com/dakcarto/homebrew-osgeo4mac/blob/master/Formula/nitro.rb
> 
> [5] https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/tree/master/python/plugins/processing/exampleprovider
> [6] https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/tree/master/python/plugins/processing/lidar
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Larry Shaffer
> Dakota Cartography
> Black Hills, South Dakota

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