[Qgis-developer] QGIS and GRASS 0.8.1 rc1: DBF driver deadlocking

[Benjamin Ducke]

Thanks for the new 0.8.1 rc win builds. The software keeps getting
better all the time! I have run a few tests on the GRASS interface with
my data as I am VERY keen on using this in my GIS classes at university
in the future.
There are two serious flaws that prevent me from doing so at the moment:

1. The DBF driver deadlocks randomly!
Any GRASS module that needs to access the attribute table (DBF format)
of a vector map is prone to this: E.g. I tried running v.out.ogr on a
map with ca. 3000 points repeatedly. Out of ten runs, 2 or 3 deadlock at
a random point. The task manager shows that v.out.ogr is sleeping with
0% CPU.
Sometimes, I also get random "DBMI protocol errors". The only thing that
helps is to stop and restart the module, hoping that it will finish this
time. Quite annoying. I tested this with several different versions of
QGIS, Windows (XP, 2000) and with different datasets on different PCs:
always the same problem.

2. There are still issues when QGIS is installed in a path with spaces.
This is a problem with the GRASS modules. I found that at least
g.mremove and d.mon screwed up. There are probably others ...

If you want to verify this, please download my sample location from
ftp://ftp.rz.uni-kiel.de/pub/ufg/qgis-test.zip
It contains a minimal GRASS location "qgis-test" that has a mapset
"user" with a raster and a vector map representing a DEM in a local
coordinate system (no projection information).

Thanks again for all the great work. Wish I could be of more use
resolving the remaining issues myself, but this is outside my competence.

Best,

Benjamin

-- 
Benjamin Ducke, M.A.
Archäoinformatik
(Archaeoinformation Science)
Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte
(Inst. of Prehistoric and Historic Archaeology)
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Johanna-Mestorf-Straße 2-6
D 24098 Kiel
Germany

Tel.: ++49 (0)431 880-3378 / -3379
Fax : ++49 (0)431 880-7300
www.uni-kiel.de/ufg