[postgis-devel] PostGIS 2.5 what should be minimum requirements?

[Regina Obe]

> Due to unfortunate timing and nobody contributing to the maintenance of
> the geospatial packages in Ubuntu, GDAL 2.x didn't make into Ubuntu
> xenial even though it was available at the time. But like EPEL, it will
> be included in the next LTS.

>  Regina, which Linux distributions are you talking about exactly? I'm not
> aware of any that are sticking to GDAL 1.x.

I think it was just my misunderstanding of how Linux packages interrelate.

I was thinking about Ubuntu and Centos.

For example I have this Ubuntu box (which is old 14.04 (not old by strk's standards :) ) ) and it's running this:

POSTGIS="2.3.3 r15473" GEOS="3.4.2-CAPI-1.8.2 r3921" PROJ="Rel. 4.8.0, 6 March 2012" GDAL="GDAL 1.11.2, released 2015/02/10" LIBXML="2.9.1" LIBJSON="0.11.99" RASTER

And PostgreSQL 9.6 version 

PostgreSQL 9.6.5 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3) 4.8.4, 64-bit

I had upgraded it using apt.postgresql.org

But I think postgresql.org relegates other dependencies to the Ubuntu project.

I don't have handy at moment, but I saw similar with an old Centos I was trying to help someone with.
Which I updated with yum.postgresql.org

Devrim (who does the yum.postgresql.org packaging) relies on EPEL so that means even if he ships a PostgreSQL 9.6 to older platforms, he is stuck with what he gets from EPEL.

So a newer Centos would have newer stuff like newer GDAL and old Centos would have like GDAL 1.11 etc.

But I presume Ubuntu has unstable ports similar to Debian where you could get newer things if ABI compatibility is kept. 

But then I don't know what happens with PostgreSQL because even with ABI compatibility since we now check these at compile time and disable features of GEOS.
If you compile with a lower GEOS, but you are shipping to a user who has upped their GEOS via unstable or something, the user is only getting the stability and speed improvements and not newer functionality that PostGIS would provide.

I guess that's okay since if they tried to use any of those functions, it would throw (compiled with lower than GEOS 3.6) .
Just makes me think about scenarios I never gave much thought to before.


> Funding packagers is a sensitive subject. In Debian we had the Dunk-Tank
> fiasco where some contributors where paid for their work and others
> weren't, that inequality was not acceptable to the project members.

> Kind Regards,

> Bas

I had in the back of my mind a problem like that.  It's a similar issue I think that affects OSGeo projects.  
So even with funding there doesn't seem to be a fair way to divvy up that money unless it's the packager/contributor 
initiating the request and ear-marking it for a particular task.

Or compensating via non-monetary ways.


Thanks,
Regina