[PROJ] Postponing removal of proj_api.h

[Jeff McKenna]

Thank you Kristian, controversial for sure, but it gives more time for 
so many projects to catch-up to all of the many great changes being made 
by the PROJ community.

-jeff



On 2020-01-23 3:27 p.m., Kristian Evers wrote:
> All,
> 
> Removing proj_api.h from the public API of PROJ has been a controversial 
> topic
> since it was announced with the 5.0.0 release. As we’ve moved closer and 
> closer
> to the release date of PROJ 7.0.0 resistance has increased. The 
> resistance is
> coming both from the wider community and several PSC members [0]. That 
> can’t be
> ignored, so the upcoming 7.0.0 release *will* include proj_api.h allowing
> downstream projects to still use the deprecated API for another release 
> cycle.
> Hopefully this decision will make life easier for both developers and 
> packagers
> and give everyone some much needed time to catch up.
> 
> Be aware though, the decision to postpone the removal of proj_api.h does not
> mean that will be skipped altogether. It *will* be removed in PROJ 
> 8.0.0. The
> immediate consequence of extending the life-time of proj_api.h is that there
> will not be any more maintenance releases of the 6.3 branch. The only 
> reason we
> planned on doing that was to offer a maintained version of PROJ that 
> includes
> proj_api.h. With the most recent version including the header file that 
> is no
> longer a concern. With 7.0 delaying removal of the header for one more 
> release
> cycle, this concern is eliminated. We expect no 7.x maintenance release
> activity related to the old API, but it is probable there will be some 
> related
> to recent efforts.
> 
> /Kristian
> 
> 
> [0] https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/pull/1872
> 
>