GeoTools 8.0-M0 released

The GeoTools 8.0-M0 release is now available for download:

• geotools-8.0-M0-bin.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-project.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-doc.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-userguide.zip

This release is made in conjunction with a new user guide; available online and included as one of the above downloads.

This release features:

• update to the latest ImageIO-EXT 1.1-RC1 allowing access to GDAL 1.7.3
• new advanced tutorial on functions
• updated datastore tutorial
• improved description of available functions

For those building from source (or using maven):

• gt-render-wkt : new unsupported module allowing definition of symbols as part of your SLD document using simple "well known text"

For more information please review the Release Notes:

• Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 8.0 series:

• http://geotools.org
• 8.x
• Upgrade to 8.x

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 8

GeoTools is changing the version numbering system used setting the next release target as GeoTools 8.

This change "drops the 2" and brings GeoTools releases in line with traditional major.minor.patch  release numbering.

Dropping the 2

This also marks the final step towards calling the project "GeoTools" (rather than "GeoTools 2"). The GeoTools 1 project was started in 1996, and the GeoTools 2 project started up in 2002 as a ground up rewrite. By changing version numbers today we are committing to users of the GeoTools library that we can avoid a ground up rewrite in the future. The development team has been able to successfully grow the library and take on an amazing range of functionality in an incremental manner. We have every confidence in our development team, user community (and the polices we use to keep things running smoothly).

Details

For details on what has been done and the motivations behind it the change proposal is here:

• Skip GeoTools 3

For more information on the version numbers and what they mean the effected pages of the developers guide are:

• Versioning
• How to cut a release

Finally thanks to Jan De Moerloose from the Geomajas project who's questions on the user list lead to this change in policy.

8-SNAPSHOT

The maven snapshot repository is already hosting 8-SNAPSHOT as the result of nightly builds, and we should be in position to release a 8.0-M0 milestone release shortly.

If you were previously using 2.8-SNAPSHOT you can update your maven dependencies with the following:

    <properties>
        <geotools.version>8-SNAPSHOT</geotools.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
            <artifactId>gt-main</artifactId>
            <version>${geotools.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
            <artifactId>gt-epsg-hsql</artifactId>
            <version>${geotools.version}</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>