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PDAL 1.7 packaged for Fedora including vertical datums and grids

Cologne city shown as colorized 3D point cloud (data source: openNRW Germany)In order to simplify the installation of the latest PDAL release (Point Data Abstraction Library, https://pdal.io/, version 1.7.0 1.7.2) on Fedora, I have created an updated set of RPM packages, again including the vertical datums and grids available from OSGeo (i.e., .gtx files from here).

The installation is as simple as this (the repository is located at Fedora’s COPR):

# enable extra repos to satisfy dependencies
sudo dnf copr enable neteler/pdal-hexer
sudo dnf copr enable neteler/points2grid
sudo dnf copr enable neteler/laszip

# install minimal dependencies
sudo dnf install hexer
sudo dnf install points2grid

# enable and install PDAL
sudo dnf copr enable neteler/pdal
sudo dnf install PDAL PDAL-vdatums

# run it
pdal-config --version
pdal --help

Enjoy!

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GRASS GIS 7.4.0 released

We are pleased to announce the GRASS GIS 7.4.0 release

GRASS GIS 7.4.0: Wildfire in Australia, seen by Sentinel-2B

What’s new in a nutshell

After a bit more than one year of development the new update release GRASS GIS 7.4.0 is available. It provides more than 480 stability fixes and improvements compared to the previous stable version 7.2. An overview of the new features in the 7.4 release series is available at New Features in GRASS GIS 7.4.

Efforts have concentrated on making the user experience even better, providing many small, but useful additional functionalities to modules and further improving the graphical user interface. Users can now directly download pre-packaged demo data locations in the GUI startup window. Several modules were migrated from addons to the core GRASS GIS package and the suite of tools for ortho-rectification was re-implemented in the new GRASS 7 GUI style. In order to support the treatment of massive datasets, new compression algorithms were introduced and NULL (no-data) raster files are now also compressed by default. For a detailed overview, see the list of new features. As a stable release series, 7.4.x enjoys long-term support.

Binaries/Installer download:

Source code download:

More details:

See also our detailed announcement:

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (https://grass.osgeo.org/), commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

The GRASS Development Team, Feb 2018

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FOSSDEM 2018 · Brussels, Belgium

Start: 2018-02-03 00:00
End: 2018-02-04 23:59

As on previous years, OSGeo will coordinate a geospatial devroom at this international event. More info about the geospatial devroom track here.

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BeGeo 2018 · Brussels, Belgium

Start: 2018-04-24 00:00
End: 2018-04-24 23:59

OSGeo.be will have a track to present talks about FOSS4G topics. More info at the event website.

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GRASS GIS 7.2.2 released

GRASS GIS 7.2.2 in action

What’s new in a nutshell

After three months of development the new update release GRASS GIS 7.2.2 is available. It provides more than 120 stability fixes and manual improvements compared to release version 7.2.1. An overview of new features in the 7.2 release series is available at New Features in GRASS GIS 7.2.

About GRASS GIS 7: Its graphical user interface supports the user to make complex GIS operations as simple as possible. The updated Python interface to the C library permits users to create new GRASS GIS-Python modules in a simple way while yet obtaining powerful and fast modules. Furthermore, the libraries were again significantly improved for speed and efficiency, along with support for huge files. A lot of effort has been invested to standardize parameter and flag names. Finally, GRASS GIS 7 comes with a series of new modules to analyse raster and vector data, along with a full temporal framework. For a detailed overview, see the list of new features. As a stable release series, 7.2.x enjoys long-term support.

Binaries/Installer download:

Source code download:

More details:

See also our detailed announcement:

First time users may explore the first steps tutorial after installation.

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (https://grass.osgeo.org/), commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

The GRASS Development Team, Sep 2017

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GRASS GIS 7.2.1 released

We are pleased to announce the update release GRASS GIS 7.2.1

GRASS GIS 7.2.1 in actionWhat’s new in a nutshell

After four months of development the new update release GRASS GIS 7.2.1 is available. It provides more than 150 stability fixes and manual improvements compared to the first stable release version 7.2.0. An overview of new features in this release series is available at New Features in GRASS GIS 7.2.

About GRASS GIS 7: Its graphical user interface supports the user to make complex GIS operations as simple as possible. The updated Python interface to the C library permits users to create new GRASS GIS-Python modules in a simple way while yet obtaining powerful and fast modules. Furthermore, the libraries were again significantly improved for speed and efficiency, along with support for huge files. A lot of effort has been invested to standardize parameter and flag names. Finally, GRASS GIS 7 comes with a series of new modules to analyse raster and vector data, along with a full temporal framework. For a detailed overview, see the list of new features. As a stable release series, 7.2.x enjoys long-term support.

Binaries/Installer download:

Source code download:

More details:

See also our detailed announcement:

https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass7/NewFeatures72 (overview of new 7.2 stable release series)

https://grass.osgeo.org/grass72/manuals/addons/ (list of available addons)

First time users may explore the first steps tutorial after installation.

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (https://grass.osgeo.org/), commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

The GRASS Development Team, May 2017

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New major release: GRASS GIS 7.2.0 available

We are pleased to announce the stable release of GRASS GIS 7.2.0

What’s new in a nutshell

After almost two years of development the new stable major release GRASS GIS 7.2.0 is available. It provides more than 1950 stability fixes and manual improvements compared to the former stable release version 7.0.5. The new version includes a series of new modules to analyse raster and vector data along with new temporal algebra functionality.More than 50 new addons are also available. A summary of the new features is available at New Features in GRASS GIS 7.2.

About GRASS GIS 7: Its graphical user interface supports the user to make complex GIS operations as simple as possible. The updated Python interface to the C library permits users to create new GRASS GIS-Python modules in a simple way while yet obtaining powerful and fast modules. Furthermore, the libraries were again significantly improved for speed and efficiency, along with support for huge files. A lot of effort has been invested to standardize parameter and flag names. Finally, GRASS GIS 7 comes with a series of new modules to analyse raster and vector data, along with a full temporal framework. For a detailed overview, see the list of new features. As a stable release series, 7.2.x enjoys long-term support.

Binaries/Installer download:

Source code download:

More details:

See also our detailed announcement:

First time users may explore the first steps tutorial after installation.

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (https://grass.osgeo.org/), commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

The GRASS Development Team, December 2016

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GRASS GIS PSC election 2016 results

The new GRASS GIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) is composed of the following nine members (ranking, name, votes):

1 Markus Neteler 62
2 Helena Mitasova 53
3 Martin Landa 52
4 Anna Petrasova 45
5 Moritz Lennert 41
6 Margherita Di Leo 39
7 Michael Barton 35
8 Peter Löwe 33
9 Vaclav Petras 31

More details in earlier announcement sent to the “grass-psc” mailing list:
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-psc/2016-August/001571.html.

For completeness, all relevant candidacy communications, as well as details about the voting process, are published at
https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/PSC/Election2016

Cited from the original announcement email:
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-announce/2016-September/000119.html

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Gaining more WMS speed through enabling the QGIS cache directory

Interestingly the WMS caching is not enabled by default in QGIS. To better enjoy WMS/WMS-C/WMTS connections – if you have some disk space to dedicate – it is a good idea to enable the cache in these few steps:

Go to the menu entry Settings >> Options:

Enabling the QGIS WMS cache - step 1

Enabling the QGIS WMS cache – step 1

Go to tab “Network“. Therein, in “Cache settings“, select the “Directory” and choose a folder for the cache files. Be sure that there is free space for lots of megabytes can be stored there over time. And this directory should ideally be located on a fast disk (if you have several).

Here I choose the existing “tmp/” folder in my HOME directory and create inside a new folder “qgis_wms_cache”:

Enabling the QGIS WMS cache - step 2

Enabling the QGIS WMS cache – step 2: create new “qgis_wms_cache” cache folder

Eventually we change the “Default expiration period for WMS-C/WMTS tiles (hours)” to more than 24 hours (as it would be rather useless…). Here I change to 24*30 = 720 hours. And the cache size we increase as well, here to 250MB (written as 250000 since it is to be given in kilobytes):

Enabling the QGIS WMS cache - step 3

Enabling the QGIS WMS cache – step 3: increase expiration period for tiles and cache size

Now we press “OK” and close the dialog. Time to try out a WMS service, zoom back and forth… and:
Enjoy!

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New GRASS GIS 7.2.x stable release branch created

Towards the new stable release series

As of 24 May 2016, a new stable release branch was created for the upcoming GRASS GIS 7.2 release. This new branch includes all the many improvements which have been implemented in the former development version 7.1.svn.

What is a branch? In simple words, it is a kind of directory in the software development server (SVN in our case) in which no more development but only bugfixing happens. From a release branch, new stable releases are created and published.

The actual branches in the GRASS GIS project are:

  • very old stable: releasebranch_6_4 (used for bugfixing and to publish stable GRASS GIS 6.4.x releases) – very low release frequency (started in revision r34936)
  • old stable releasebranch_7_0 (used for bugfixing and to publish stable GRASS GIS 7.0.x releases) – perhaps one last release upcoming (branch started in revision r59487 but development already started in Apr 2008 in r31142)
  • new stable releasebranch_7_2 (used for bugfixing and to publish stable GRASS GIS 7.2.x releases) – upcoming series of stable releases (branch started in revision r68500)
  • trunk (used for development, with pseudo-name 7.3.svn) – under heavy development

Note to SVN users

The trunk branch with pseudo-name 7.1.svn has become 7.3.svn due to the creation of the new 7.2.svn release branch. You can simply continue to update from SVN, the version will be automatically updated.

If you used to work with the 7.0.svn release branch, consider to download the new 7.2.svn release branch, either from the weekly source code snapshot (here) or from the SVN server directly (here).

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (https://grass.osgeo.org/), commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

The GRASS Development Team, May 2016

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