[pycsw-devel] MS4W installer containing pycsw-dev for Windows users

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi pycsw community!

Short summary
-------------

Windows users might be interested that MS4W (the popular installer for 
MapServer https://ms4w.com) is almost ready to be released, with pycsw 
running (!!!).  It will be named "MS4W 4.0", and there is now an alpha 
package containing pycsw ready to test at 
https://ms4w.com/release/experimental/ms4w_4.0.0_alpha19.zip  (not 
familiar with running MS4W or how to install it?  You can wait for the 
setup.exe installer which will come shortly and install pycsw, Apache, 
for you)

Longer explanation
------------------

I've been working very hard on a big MS4W release, containing PHP 7 and 
Python, Java, CSharp mapscripts, and also its own included Python 
instance (hundreds of libraries in total, all compiled from source with 
Visual Studio 2017).  I've also now included pycsw (master), running on 
Python 3.7.0  (some of you devs are definitely cringing already I bet, 
seeing that version, but please hear me out)

Note that such an installer, for PHP7 and Python, GDAL, MapServer, 
Apache, mod_wsgi (pycsw is running through mod_wsgi) demands a recent 
compiler that can handle building all of that together, which is why 
Visual Studio 2017 was chosen.

Of course, to install pycsw I realize the hardcoded requirements (in 
requirements.txt) for lxml, pyproj, Shapely, but to make all of this 
work in the new 2017 compiler, I've used newer library versions for 
those (lxml 4.3.0, pyproj 1.9.6, Shapely 1.6.4.post2).

The only change I had to make was to use "WKTReadingError" in 
pycsw/core/repository.py (line#41), because I am using a much newer 
version of Shapely and GEOS.  For the record, I couldn't find anyone 
else reporting that change.

I guess my question is that if anyone sees any show stoppers for using 
these updated library versions.  I know, it is not recommended, but, out 
of this is an actual Windows installer for the many Windows users (MS4W 
gets between 4,000 to 6,000 installs a month, I monitor it closely).

The Alpha now includes a running catalogue service with just the SQLite 
cite.db records, but I am sure we can expand that later (note that I 
discovered that most if not all records as part of the 'gisdata' package 
are outdated/broken, which you can see for yourself in the pycsw viewer 
at http://demo.pycsw.org/viewer/ (that viewer leverages the 'gisdata' 
package for its records)

It would be great to have a lighter-weight viewer to demonstrate the 
power of pycsw for MS4W users (I realize pycsw is headless, but it is 
nice for new users to see it in action).  For sure I will push MS4W 
users to test their CSW services with the QGIS MetaSearch plugin (great 
work thanks!).

Well, I hope this news is accepted well, even if it pushes the limits of 
'recommended/required' software versions.  I hope this big effort helps 
the whole pycsw community.

Thanks for your great work on pycsw.

-jeff


-- 
Jeff McKenna
MapServer Consulting and Training Services
https://gatewaygeomatics.com/