GRASS: Development

GRASS GIS Development Roadmap

The (draft) development roadmap describes ongoing and future development.

NEW ROADMAP: please see Release Roadmap in the Wiki

The (proposed) changes are described in more detail below. Various "TODOs" indicate the need for more developers to participate. Please contact the GRASS Development Team on the developers mailing list.

Version number scheme:

• first number: major release number
• secondary number: minor release number (stable/development indicator)
• third number: revision

Using this scheme, version numbers have a very clear meaning:

• new revision == bugs have been fixed, go grab it and install it.
• new minor == new features are available, source compatibility _and_ binary compatibility for existing applications are guaranteed [not fully true for GRASS 6 where old vector/sites maps have to be converted by v.convert/v.in.sites.].
• new major == beware! Old (ugly) libraries have been dropped. Database compatibility has been broken, you have to migrate your database to the new formats.

In a release, we keep existing:

• modules
• options and their meaning
• data formats
• C structures
• constants

Features comparison table

Status of PROJ4 and datum transformation support

• GRASS 5.0.0pre3 and earlier contains an old copy of Gerald Evenden's USGS pure PROJ version
• GRASS >= 5.0.0pre4 and <5.3 have Frank Warmerdam's PROJ4 with datum functions but they are not used
• GRASS >= 5.3 and later use Frank Warmerdam's PROJ4 with datum transformation functions

Roadmap

Development Line	stable (even secondary number)	development (odd secondary number)
GRASS 5.x	5.0.3 (current)	[5.1-cvs: renamed to 5.7-cvs]
	(5.0.4) bugfixes for 5.0.3, if needed	5.3-cvs (old CVS HEAD) datum transformation improved NVIZ G3D activated r.terraflow (C++) improved source code portability better tested than 5.0.3
	5.4.x bugfixes for 5.3.x	End of 5.0.x development. Not to be continued with new features
GRASS 6.x		6.x-cvs (was: former 5.1-cvs) new 2D/3D vector engine (almost done) eliminate sites by migrating to vector points[2] new vector network library (done, needs fixes in cache) DBMS support (done) migration of old vector modules (almost done) keep but discourage sites format [1] ("done") better integrate G3D voxel (partially done) new Makefile system (done) shared libraries (done), static libraries also supported initial code inline docs (doxygen based, partially done) [1] to keep the sites modules for a while seems to be necessary as we do not have the resources to upgrade all sites functionality to vector in the short term.  No efforts should be invested to improve the sites. [2] point data are treated as vector nodes with following advantages: spatial index for speed, DBMS, NULL support, ...
	6.0.x included then: new vector engine DBMS support polished vector libs inline code docs etc.	6.1.x... eliminate sites by migrating to vector points[2] improve/rewrite raster data library (TODO, maybe GRASS 7?) change raster maps directory layout (store all map related files into a single directory) MAPSET/TYPE/MAPNAME/FILES [3] (TODO) rename raster functions G_*() to Rast_*() (TODO) improve image processing cleanup libs/modules from clones (ongoing) implement SQL based time series support for raster maps (TODO) implement topology-free points support for LIDAR (ongoing) rewrite display drivers (ongoing) [3] done for the new vector format, advantage to simplify maintenance and backups.