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

[Charles Karney]

+1 Charles


> On Apr 8, 2026, at 08:12, Even Rouault via PROJ <proj at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> 
> 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*
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.spatialys.com
> My software is free, but my time generally not.
> 
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