[postgis-users] Roadmap for next major release of PostGIS

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

Chris Hermansen wrote:

> Ideally, all of us users out there should want to see an approach that
> makes builds "simple" for developers :-)
> 
> But in the interesting situation where we users find ourselves needing
> to build some components from source (say, because GEOS in the Ubuntu
> repos is still at 2.2):
> 
> Do you anticipate trying to make a PGXS-based build system for GEOS and
> Proj as well?
> 
> Do you forsee this PGXS-based approach working well in conjunction with
> headers and libraries delivered through package managers like apt or
> yum?  Speaking selfishly, I'd rather not see you make it easier for
> building on a windows platform at the expense of others...
> 
> I guess a more productive way to make this comment is how do the
> developers see the user community doing builds?  Do you need us to tell
> you when, why, how?

Hang on a second. PGXS is a set of Makefiles provided with PostgreSQL to 
facilitate the building of modules that link into the PostgreSQL 
backend. It doesn't affect the build of GEOS or PROJ at all, and from 
the user's point of view, a PostGIS build is still just "configure" 
followed by "make install" for Unix-type systems. As a result of the 
re-organisation, though, the code should stand some chance of building 
reasonable under MSVC. But that will still require more testing.

> It would be nice if Proj and GEOS dependencies also suggested to the
> builder that the latest version should be used...

The current test code has full version checking for both GEOS and PROJ, 
so please provide technical reasons as to which minimum versions should 
be supported. From a purely selfish point of view, I'd be tempted to 
make the minimum version of PROJ 4.5.0 since earlier versions don't 
contain the right datum for correct OSGB transformations.

> Too bad it wasn't possible to write the regression tests in Python. 
> Why?  Well, I think having some documented examples of good Python /
> PostGIS / PostgreSQL usage would be very helpful to the users thinking
> about coming over from an ESRI / Python environment...

Perl seems to be the best choice as it is required for both the 
PostgreSQL Unix and Win32 builds - hence it requires one less extra 
dependency. It's also just regress testing, i.e. launching processes, 
comparing output etc. rather than connecting using proper drivers and 
doing useful work.

> I didn't see official mention of the launch point for all of the above,
> but based on the preceding paragraph I'm assuming that all this Good
> Stuff will happen in 1.4, or 2.0, or something like that...???

Well some of the work has already started in SVN trunk. The next release 
is slated to be 1.4, although who knows what may happen if new features 
get added? ;)


ATB,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland
Sirius Corporation - The Open Source Experts
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
T: +44 870 608 0063