[PROJ] Future maintainance releases

[Kristian Evers]

I agree with Bas. proj_api.h is a band-aid that needs to be ripped off and if we do it later
rather than sooner we risk losing the momentum that has already been built up.

PROJ 7 is not only a matter of removing proj_api.h, although it is the biggest issue
at hand. There are other API changes that would be beneficial to get out of the way,
for instance the proj_list_ functions which has been superseded by more elaborate
functions that query the database rather than hard-coded lists. On my wish-list is
also a simplification regarding build systems (i.e. two is one too many) but that is
a talk for another day.

The next scheduled release [0] that includes new features is PROJ 7. The date is
set to March 1st 2020. In the meantime two more maintenance releases are
planned. The last maintenance release of the 6.2 branch is scheduled to coincide
with 7.0.0. If the improvements regarding vertical transformations make it so that
it will be difficult to backport changes so be it. I reckon that some changes will
still be possible to backport but of course as master gets farther and farther
apart from the 6.2 branch backports will get progressively more difficult to keep
up. Such is life. We can skip the January 1st release of 6.2.2 if there is not a
substantial number of bug fixes to the branch. 

The downstream projects that are still stuck on proj_api.h will get a final release
of the 6.2 branch in March which I believe should keep those projects afloat for
at least another year. Hopefully that buys everyone enough time to transition
to the new API.

Even, what other important dependencies are still lagging behind? I agree that
Spatialite is important but since the project seemingly has adopted the new API
(btw their report [1] on PROJ 6 is worth a read). At the top of my head I can't
think or other big players that are still on the old API.

/Kristian


[0] https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/milestones?direction=asc&sort=due_date 
[1] https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/wiki?name=PROJ.6


-----Original Message-----
From: PROJ <proj-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of Sebastiaan Couwenberg
Sent: 30. oktober 2019 05:01
To: proj at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [PROJ] Future maintainance releases

On 10/29/19 10:57 PM, Even Rouault wrote:
> The question PROJ 7 or not (if by PROJ 7 we mean removing proj_api.h) will 
> also need to be considered. There are still important dependencies like 
> Spatialite who haven't yet released a version without proj_api.h dependency 
> (as far as I can see from [2], the 'master' contains the changes to use proj.h 
> though)

If you don't remove proj_api.h, downstream projects are not motivated
enough to switch to proj.h. Many project have just defined
ACCEPT_USE_OF_DEPRECATED_PROJ_API_H to fix their builds with PROJ 6.

Kind Regards,

Bas

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