Ready for starting the release cycle of the NEXT GENERATION

[Alessandro Furieri]

Hi List,

in the last days some "Medicine Man" (probably after carefully reading the

tea leaves in the bottom of the cup) concluded that the SpatiaLite project

was becoming moribund.

Happily for us all, it was a fake new: SpatiaLite never was in a better 

physical shape than today.

The long lasting and tiresome development work started few years ago 

is now almost completed, and today we are finally ready to begin the last

steps toward the final release of all the individual components of the

NEXT GENERATION SpatiaLite's growing family.

This final phase will presumably end in October; community collaboration

for testing the software and checking the documentation will certainly be 

of paramount relevance.

This time we are not simply going to release a single library or software

application; we are going instead to release a rather complex family of

individual components strictly related the one to the other, and this surely

requires some extraordinary effort.

Let's see the general principles that will regulate this final phase:

1. each individual component will follow its own autonomous way toward

   its final STABLE release.

2  the whole process will complete only when all the components of the

   NEXT GENERATION family will reach their final STABLE release.

3. each single component will independently enter the Release Candidate 

   status when all design functionalities will be definitively implemented

   and will work in a reasonably stable and safe way.

   any further development activity will be frozen for all components 

   in the Release Candidate status, except for fixing critical bugs

   and nursing the build scripts.

   once that all the above staging steps will terminate, then the

   component will be duly released in its final STABLE form.

4. all the other components not yet ready for becoming Release Candidates

   will still continue to be classified as BETA.

   a component in BETA status is still subject to active development

   (e.g. some further functionality could be added, and the API/ABI 

   could eventually change if considered convenient).

   each subsequent BETA step will be sequentially numbered for clarity,

   but its important to understand well that a BETA release does not 

   necessarily corresponds to any peculiar milestone.

   a BETA step simply corresponds to a snapshot of the current Fossil 

   repository, and is uniquely intended to allow building the

   whole NEXT GENERATION family in a self-consistent fashion.

 

 

Components of the NEXT GENERATION family

----------------------------------------

1) libspatialite-5.0.0

2) librasterlite2-1.1.0

3) virtualpg-2.0.0

4) spatialite_gui-2.1.0 (corresponding to the integration of

   all the three others). 

General release plan for Testing (unstable) versions

----------------------------------------------------

a) each time that an individual component will be ready for

   entering the Release Candidate status (or for transitioning

   from the RC to its finale STABLE status) all the components

   of the NEXT GENERATION family will be released as well (may

   well be still in a BETA status), so to ensure a correct 

   synchronization and overall consistency.

b) each Testing release will always include both the source

   tarballs and the pre-built executable binaries for Windows 

   platforms.

c) the Testing cycle will stop when the last individual

   component will finally reach its STABLE release.

A more specific announcement about the first BETA step

made available will follow in the next hours.

bye Sandro

[Andrea Borruso]

Hi Sandro,

as usual thank you for all!!

[Totò Fiandaca]

Grazie mille!!!

Thank you

[linux...@gmail.com]

On Friday, August 3, 2018 at 11:57:09 AM UTC+2, Alessandro Furieri wrote:

Components of the NEXT GENERATION family

----------------------------------------

1) libspatialite-5.0.0

2) librasterlite2-1.1.0

3) virtualpg-2.0.0

4) spatialite_gui-2.1.0 (corresponding to the integration of

   all the three others).

Happy to see details about the release planning for spatialite 5.0.0.

I'm mostly missing spatialite--tools in this list, has this project lost its relevance?

There is not much activity for it in its fossil repository either.

Kind Regards,

Bas

[a.fu...@lqt.it]

Hi Bas,

I've omitted to mention the spatialite-tools mainly because they'll
not be directly affected by NEXT GENERATION changes (with just one
single exception).
They'll directly inherit all the benefits from NEXTGEN when linked
against libspatialite-5.0.0, but this will mainly interest the SQL
level; the C code itself doesn't require any change at all.

the unique remarkable exception is the "spatialite_convert" tool,
that was initially introduced for facilitating the conversion
of existing database files back and forth from the layouts
previously adopted by versions 2 and 3 and the (at the time)
new layout introduced by version 4.
now "spatialite_convert" requires a deep update so to be able
to correctly support the new layout adopted by version 5 as well,
but this will happen only in the very final steps of the overall
release cycle, when the DB layout will be definitely fixed
and certainly no longer affected by last-minute changes.

bye Sandro

[Jorge]

Estupenda noticia!!!

Thank you

[David Anderson]

As the medicine man of the moribund I am thrilled that to paraphrase Mark Twain the report of Spatialite's decline is exaggerated.

Looking forward to trying out the new versions

and also thanks Sandro for continuing to develop and expand the software.

[HansGIS]

+1

Just read the great news.

Thanks for all the work so far!

[Bas Couwenberg]

It's been 16 months since the release of libspatialite 5.0.0-beta0, librasterlite2 1.1.0-beta0, virtualpg 2.0.0-RC0, and spatialite_gui 2.1.0-beta0.

The support for PROJ6 did not result in a new beta.

The last commit for libspatiate was 3 months ago, for librasterlite2 it was 7 months, for virtualpg 4 months, and for spatialite_gui 7 months as well.

Since "the whole process will complete only when all the components of the NEXT GENERATION family will reach their final STABLE release" it doesn't seem like this will happen before the PROJ 7 release scheduled for March 2020 (3 months from now).

Distributions will be forced to remove the spatialite family if they want to transition to PROJ 7, shipping the fossil snapshots is out of the question because "the API/ABI could eventually change if considered convenient".

What is needed for the NEXT GENERATION to see more active development and releases? More developers, funding, something else?

Perhaps Santa can provide some of that, or people can make it part of their new years resolution.

[Pedro Camargo]

I'd like to second Bas' concerns on the development of Spatialite.

This is an absolutely wonderful project that has allowed me to advance quite a bit on some of my projects, but would be good to have some clarity on where it is going and whether there is any future for it.

Is joining a larger group (such as OSGEOS) even something you are considering, Sandro?

Again, I am VERY appreciative of the project and all the work that was put into it (I also develop FOSS), but it does look like you could use some extra hands in developing it.

Cheers,

Pedro

[David Anderson]

As I said before https://groups.google.com/d/msg/spatialite-users/jNZLms4xGXM/4M0PpMBeBgAJ the project is moribund. 

[piergiovanna grossi]

Thank you very much Sandro!

P.

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[Jeff McKenna]

Seconding the thanks to Sandro, stay positive and keep up the great
work! Thank you for all of your effort.

-jeff

On 2020-02-28 6:29 p.m., piergiovanna grossi wrote:
> Thank you very much Sandro!
> P.
>
> Il Ven 17 Ago 2018, 14:11 HansGIS <hans...@gmail.com

> <mailto:hans...@gmail.com>> ha scritto:

>
> +1
> Just read the great news.
> Thanks for all the work so far!
>
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[Bas Couwenberg]

On Friday, February 28, 2020 at 11:44:30 PM UTC+1, Jeff McKenna wrote:

Seconding the thanks to Sandro, stay positive and keep up the great
work!  Thank you for all of your effort.

Did I miss something?

What great work and effort are you talking about?

Looking at the fossil repos I still see very little activity.

How do you expect us to stay positive when it's been almost two years since the next generation was announced, but little to nothing tangible happened in the mean time?

PROJ 7 is about to be released, and the lack of SpatiaLite releases with support for proj.h was one of the reasons PROJ 7 will not drop proj_api.h as originally planned two years ago and announced with the PROJ 5.0.0 release.

The lack of development and releases of the SpatiaLite family and hindering progress in the wider GIS stack make me very sad, the opposite of positive.

If there was renewed activity in the fossil repos, or fork elsewhere with a healthy developer community, that would cause for optimism.

Sandro did not even reply when asked what is needed to see more active development and releases, he's notoriously quiet on the subject.

If funding is required, we can have a crowdfunding campain. If its developers, we can collect funds and/or recruit in related projects for that. If it's something else, we can work to meet that need.

Unless the lack of development is addressed, the SpatiaLite family will be removed from Debian (and Ubuntu by extension), other distributions will likely follow suit. How is that positive for anyone using these packages?

[Jorge Rocha Gualtieri]

It is really sad to see this project like this. libspatialite is awesome! 

I've just found that Ubuntu 20.04 LTS still holds libsqlite3-mod-spatialite (4.3.0a-6build1) and the fossil repo has known bugs fixed and a release hasn't happened since 2015-09-07. 

What would be needed to make this project active again?

[Pac]

Hi Sandro et al.,

I've just visited SpatiaLite timeline and I'm glad to see libspatialite-5.0.0-RC1 has been published.

Thanks for your work in this project, Sandro: I hope you and your family is doing well on these times.

Kind regards,

Paco.

[a.fu...@lqt.it]

On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 03:02:16 -0700 (PDT), Pac wrote:
> Hi Sandro et al.,
>

> I've just visited SpatiaLite timeline [1]and I'm glad to see
> libspatialite-5.0.0-RC1 [2] has been published.

> Thanks for your work in this project, Sandro: I hope you and your
> family is doing well on these times.
>

Hi Paco,

don't be rushed; work still in progess.

I'll send a public release announcement when anything will
be definitely ready (probably before night, european time).

bye Sandro

[Jeff McKenna]

great news, thanks for your effort Sandro!!

-jeff




--
Jeff McKenna
MapServer Consulting and Training Services
co-founder of FOSS4G
http://gatewaygeo.com/

[Maurizio Trevisani]

❤️

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[Even Rouault]

Hi,

 

I've tried libspatialite-5.0.0-RC1 and librasterlite2-1.1.0-beta1 with GDAL, with PROJ 7.2dev, and things go well.

 

Even

 

> Hi Sandro et al.,

>

> I've just visited SpatiaLite timeline

> <https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/timeline>and I'm glad to see

> libspatialite-5.0.0-RC1

> <http://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/libspatialite-sources/libspatialite-5.0.0-

> RC1.zip> has been published.

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