What’s new in a nutshell

The GRASS GIS 8.3.0 release provides more than 360 changes compared to the 8.2 branch. This new minor release brings in many fixes and improvements in GRASS GIS modules and the graphical user interface (GUI) which now has the single window layout by default. Some of the most relevant changes include: support for parallelization in three raster modules, new options added to several temporal modules, and substantial clean-up of g.extension, the module that allows the installation of add-ons. The GUI also received a lot of attention with many fixes and items reorganised. We have also adopted the Clang format and indented most of the C code accordingly. A lot of effort was put into cleaning up the C/C++ code to fix almost all compiler warnings.

Translations have been moved from Transifex to Weblate, which automatically creates pull requests with the translated chunks. We’d like to thank the translators of all languages for their long term support!

GRASS GIS 8.3

Also, docker images have been updated and moved from the mundialis to the OSGeo organization at https://hub.docker.com/r/osgeo/grass-gis/.

We have carried out quite some work in the GitHub Actions: we added support for “pre-commit” in order to reduce unnecessary runs of the automated checks, there were notable improvements in the code checking section and we have activated renovatebot to automatically maintain GitHub Actions.

Last but not least, we have significantly improved the automated release creation to reduce maintainer workload and we have gained nine new contributors! Welcome all!!

Full list of changes and contributors

For all 360+ changes, see our detailed announcement with the full list of features and bugs fixed at GitHub / Releases / 8.3.0.

Thank you all contributors!!

Download and test!

Binaries/Installers download

Further binary packages for other platforms and distributions will follow shortly, please check at software downloads.

Source code download

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. It can be used either as a stand-alone application, as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R, or in the cloud. 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 Dev Team

The 8.2.0 release of GRASS GIS is now available with results from the GSoC 2021 and many other additions. A new grass.jupyter package is now included for interacting with Jupyter notebooks. Single window graphical user interface is available in GUI settings. r.series and three other modules are newly parallelized. Additionally, the release includes a series of scripting, packaging, and reproducibility improvements.

For all 220+ changes, see our detailed announcement with the full contributors and list of features and bugs fixed at GitHub / Releases / 8.2.0. Special thanks to GSoC students, their mentors, and first-time contributors!

Packages and installers are now available for Windows, macOS, Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo with more coming soon.

See more at grass.osgeo.org / News.

Overview of changes

After more than 3 year of development the first stable release GRASS GIS 8.0.0 is available. Efforts have concentrated on making the user experience even better, providing many new useful additional functionalities to modules and further improving the graphical user interface.

Breaking news: new graphical user interface with entirely rewritten startup sequence!

This re-establishes user experience compatibility with QGIS and other connected software packages.

The GRASS GIS 8.0.0 release provides more than 1,400 fixes and improvements with respect to the release 7.8.6.

With the introduction of the semantic label raster metadata class, the temporal database was modified to version 3. Hence, to be able to read and process GRASS 7.x space-time datasets, users will be prompted to run t.upgrade. If users want to read newly created space-time datasets back in GRASS 7.x, they can run t.downgrade.

Launching the software

The user experience of the graphical user interface has been completely rewritten: no more clumsy selection screens – just enter the menu system directly! And on command line, GRASS GIS now starts versionless, i.e. as grass. Enjoy!

Download and detailed list of changes

Thanks to all contributors!

GRASS GIS 8.0.0RC2 contributors

Overview of changes

After more than 3 year of development the first stable release GRASS GIS 8.0.0 is available. Efforts have concentrated on making the user experience even better, providing many new useful additional functionalities to modules and further improving the graphical user interface.

Breaking news: new graphical user interface with entirely rewritten startup sequence!

This re-establishes user experience compatibility with QGIS and other connected software packages.

The GRASS GIS 8.0.0 release provides more than 1,300 fixes and improvements with respect to the release 7.8.6.

With the introduction of the semantic label raster metadata class, the temporal database was modified to version 3. Hence, to be able to read and process GRASS 7.x space-time datasets, users will be prompted to run t.upgrade. If users want to read newly created space-time datasets back in GRASS 7.x, they can run t.downgrade.

Launching the software

The user experience of the graphical user interface has been completely rewritten: no more clumsy selection screens – just enter the menu system directly!

And on command line, GRASS GIS now starts versionless, i.e. as grass.

Download and detailed list of changes

See https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/releases/tag/8.0.0RC2

Thanks to all contributors!

GRASS GIS 8.0.0RC2 contributors

What’s new in a nutshell Zanzibar Mapping Initiative data processed in OpenDroneMap and interpolated respecting building footprints using v.surf.icw

As a follow-up to the previous GRASS GIS 7.8.4 we have published the new release GRASS GIS 7.8.5 with more than 80 improvements. This minor release offers new wxGUI fixes across the tree. Also the addon extension manager received various stability fixes. VRT raster map with tiled raster maps can now be properly exported and imported in the native GRASS GIS raster format.

The overview of new features in the 7.8 release series is available at new features in GRASS GIS 7.8. See also our detailed announcement with the full list of changes and bugs fixed at https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/7.8.5-News.

Binaries/Installer download:

Source code download:

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. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics or in the cloud. 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, Dec 2020

What’s new in a nutshell

Processed LiDAR data in GRASS GIS (screenshot by @neteler)As a follow-up to the previous GRASS GIS 7.8.3 we have published the new release GRASS GIS 7.8.4 with more than 170 improvements. This minor release again focuses on wxGUI fixes, especially in the animation export, the layer management, 3D visualization and the data catalogue. Many display modules received fixes as well, and the vector digitizer now works as expected.

The overview of new features in the 7.8 release series is available at new features in GRASS GIS 7.8. See also our detailed announcement with the full list of changes and bugs fixed at https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/7.8.4-News.

Binaries/Installer download:

Source code download:

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. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics or in the cloud. 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, Oct 2020

On February 4, 2006 OSGeo held its first meeting in Chicago, with 25 participants representing 18 groups and over 20 different Open Source GIS projects, and 39 others participating via Internet Relay Chat. During the meeting, participants made important decisions in the formation and organization of the foundation, including the name, structure and purpose. The consensus reached in Chicago opened the way for the establishment of a productive and representative foundation.

Today we are happy to announce that the we have meanwhile over 32,800 unique subscribers in the huge list of over 290 OSGeo mailing lists!

And: check out the web site of the OSGeo foundation.

More to come this year!

… see here for the growing list of events

We are pleased to announce the GRASS GIS 7.4.2 release

What’s new in a nutshell

After a bit more than four months of development the new update release GRASS GIS 7.4.2 is available. It provides more than 50 stability fixes and improvements compared to the previous stable version 7.4.1. 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. Segmentation now support extremely large raster maps. Dockerfile and Windows support received updates. Also the manual was improved. 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, October 2018

Today marks 35 years of GRASS GIS development – with frequent releases the project keeps pushing the limits in terms of geospatial data processing quality and performance.

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics and map production, spatial modeling, and 3D visualization. Since the major GRASS GIS 7 version, it also comes with a feature rich engine for space-time cubes useful for time series processing of Landsat and Copernicus Sentinel satellite data and more. GRASS GIS can be either used as a desktop application or as a backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R. Furthermore, it is frequently used on HPC and cloud infrastructures for massive parallelized data processing.

Brief history
In 1982, under the direction of Bill Goran at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), two GIS development efforts were undertaken. First, Lloyd Van Warren, a University of Illinois engineering student, began development on a new computer program that allowed analysis of mapped data.  Second, Jim Westervelt (CERL) developed a GIS package called “LAGRID – the Landscape Architecture Gridcell analysis system” as his master’s thesis. Thirty five years ago, on 29 July 1983, the user manual for this new system titled “GIS Version 1 Reference Manual” was first published by J. Westervelt and M. O’Shea. With the technical guidance of Michael Shapiro (CERL), the software continued its development at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA/CERL) in Champaign, Illinois; and after further expansion version 1.0 was released in 1985 under the name Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS). The GRASS GIS community was established the same year with the first annual user meeting and the launch of GRASSnet, one of the internet’s early mailing lists. The user community expanded to a larger audience in 1991 with the “Grasshopper” mailing list and the introduction of the World Wide Web. The users’ and programmers’ mailing lists archives for these early years are still available online.
In the mid 1990s the development transferred from USA/CERL to The Open GRASS Consortium (a group who would later generalize to become today’s Open Geospatial Consortium — the OGC). The project coordination eventually shifted to the international development team made up of governmental and academic researchers and university scientists. Reflecting this shift to a project run by the users, for the users, in 1999 GRASS GIS was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). A detailed history of GRASS GIS can be found at https://grass.osgeo.org/history/.

Where to next?
The development on GRASS GIS continues with more energy and interest than ever. Parallel to the long-term maintenance of the GRASS 7.4 stable series, effort is well underway on the new upcoming cutting-edge 7.6 release, which will bring many new features, enhancements, and cleanups. As in the past, the GRASS GIS community is open to any contribution, be it in the form of programming, documentation, testing, and financial sponsorship. Please contact us!

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, July 2018

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://www.pdal.io/, version 1.6.0) on Fedora, I have created an updated set of RPM packages now including vertical datums and grids (.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

# install dependencies
sudo dnf install hexer
sudo dnf install points2grid

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

# run PDAL:
pdal-config --version
pdal --help

Enjoy!