[PROJ] PROJ 9.8.1 release candidate and motion to approve it

[Even Rouault]

Hi,

I've prepared a release candidate for PROJ 9.8.1, ahead of the planned schedule, to address the ETRS89 related issues mentioned in the below release notes.

Download the archives here:

https://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-9.8.1RC1.tar.gz
https://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-9.8.1RC1.zip

Community members, please report any issue.
PSC members, please test and cast your vote to promote it to final 9.8.1

Starting with my +1

Even

## 9.8.1

### Warning

It was discovered after the PROJ 9.8.0 release that several EPSG updates 
introduced
after EPSG v12.033 - notably the introduction of national realizations 
of ETRS89
(ETRS89-XXX […] where XXX is the 3-letter ISO country code) - caused 
backward
incompatibilities in some workflows involving the ETRS89 CRS.

In particular, transformations between ETRS89 and national CRSs based on 
other
datums are known to be affected for Austria, Belgium, Catalonia, the 
Netherlands,
Romania, and Serbia. See #4736 for more details.

While we intend to resume tracking the latest EPSG releases in future PROJ
versions, the safest solution identified so far to address these 
regressions is to
**revert the EPSG related content of its database from EPSG v12.049 to 
v12.029**,
where v12.029 was the version distributed with PROJ 9.7.1

As a consequence of this revert, the EPSG datum and CRS records 
introduced in
PROJ 9.8.0, which are mostly related to the new ETRS89-XXX datum and 
CRS, are no
longer available in PROJ 9.8.1.

### Updates

* Database: **Revert content from EPSG v12.049 to v12.029** (#4741).
   See above warning for more details.

* CMake: handle deprecated SQLite::SQLite3 target in CMake 4.3 (#4694)

### Bug Fixes

* Make sure that epoch is set in more scenarios of time-dependent 
transformations (#4688)

* pj_obj_create: use database context if already open for grid name 
resolution (#4703)

* Chain vertical CRS transformations through intermediate same-datum 
vertical CRS (#4711)
   Helps for example for **EPSG:5705** (Baltic 1977 height) to 
**EPSG:5706** (Caspian depth)
   by using intermediate operation from Baltic 1977 height to Caspian 
*height*


-- 
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