GDAL/OGR 2.3.0 *PRELIMINARY* Release Notes (to 1121758f74589f8850193a5baced7ab1335a4b39)

Note: due to the change of SCM during the development, #XXXX still refers to Trac tickets. GitHub tickets are explicitly indicated with github #XXXX

In a nutshell…

• New GDAL drivers:
  • PDS4: read/write
  • RDA: DigitalGlobe Raster Data Access (read-only)
• New OGR drivers:
  • MVT: add read/write driver for Mapbox Vector Tile standalone files or tilesets
  • ESRIJson and TopoJSON: created from existing code of the GeoJSON driver
  • WFS3: *experimental* read-only driver
• RFC 68: Make C++11 a build requirement

​https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc68_cplusplus11

• RFC 70: Guess output format from extension of output filename, if no explicit format passed to C++ or Python utilities

​https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc70_output_format_guess

• RFC 71: Move to GitHub for source code repository and issue tracker.

​https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc71_github_migration

• Significantly improved drivers:
  • MBTiles (vector tiles support)
  • DXF
  • GRIB (GRIB2 write support)
  • WCS (support WCS 2.0)
• Improvements in network-based /vsi handlers: /vsicurl, /vsis3, /vsigs. Add:
  • /vsiaz for Microsoft Azure Blobs
  • /vsioss for Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service
  • /vsiswift/ for OpenStack Swift object storage
• Command line utilities: use Unicode main on Windows to avoid issues with non-ASCII characters (#7065)
• Update to EPSG v9.2 (#7125)
• Update data/esri_extra.wkt and add data/esri_epsg.wkt, taken from ​https://github.com/Esri/projection-engine-db-doc (Apache v2 license) (#2163)
• Add support for PROJ.5 new API (requires proj 5.0.1 or later)
• More than 1000 fixes for issues/vulnerabilities found by OSS-Fuzz
• Remove raster OGDI driver (vector OGDI driver still there) (#7087)

New installed files

• data/pds4_template.xml
• data/esri_epsg.wkt

Backward compatibility issues

See MIGRATION_GUIDE.TXT

GDAL/OGR 2.3.0 - General Changes

Build(Unix):

• refresh config.{guess,sub} from latest upstream; upgrade to libtool 2.4.6 files
• add a --with-rename-internal-shapelib-symbols option that defaults to yes if --with-hide-internal-symbols is set; and make -with-rename-internal-libtiff/libgeotiff-symbols also defaults to yes when --with-hide-internal-symbols is set
• add a --with-charls switch (enabled by default) to compile that JPEGLS driver
• make --without-static-proj and --with-fgdb an error when filegdb (>= 1.5) embeds proj.4 symbols
• add --with-zstd switch (for GTiff ZStd compressino with internal libtiff)
• add support for ECW SDK 5.4, by detecting if we must link against the newabi or oldabi link
• fix detection of 64bit file API with clang 5 (#6912)
• GNUmakefile: add a static-lib and install-static-lib targets
• use .exe extension when building with mingw64* toolchains (#6919)
• Pass --silent to libtool in compile (C and C++), link, install and clean modes.
• Limit number of installed cpl*.h files installed to a fixed list.

Build(Windows):

• always build the PDF driver, even when none of poppler/podofo/pdfium are available, in which case it is write-only (#6938)
• add new targets bindings, bindings_install and bindings_clean that depend on the new BINDINGS option in nmake.opt (#6948)
• for Kakadu, add capability to build as a plugin, and make it possibly to link only against the Kakadu .lib/.dll instead of incorporating some of its .obj (#6940)
• nmake.opt: Ensure PDB is included in release DLL if WITH_PDB requested (#7055)
• nmake.opt: use /MDd for OPTFLAGS for DEBUG=1 builds (#7059)
• nmake.opt: avoid some settings to be defined unconditionally (#5286)
• nmake.opt: add configuration to enable openssl (which is needed for thread-safe curl use)

Developer corner:

• Add scripts/setdevenv.sh to setup env variables needed for running GDAL without installing it

GDAL 2.3.0 - Overview of Changes

Port:

• Add CPLJSONDocument/Object/Array - C++ thin wrapper around json-c library. (github #282)
• /vsicurl/: fix occasional inappropriate failures in Read() with some combinations of initial offset, file size and read request size (#6901)
• /vsicurl/: add a CPL_VSIL_CURL_NON_CACHED configuration option, so as to be able to specify filenames whose content must not be cached after dataset closing
• /vsicurl/: honour GDAL_HTTP_MAX_RETRY and GDAL_HTTP_RETRY_DELAY config options. Add extended filename syntax to pass options use_head, max_retry, retry_delay and list_dir.
• /vsicurl/: enable redirection optimization on signed URLs of Google Cloud Storage. Helps for the PLScenes driver (fixes #7067)
• /vsicurl/ and derived filesystems: redirect ReadDir() to ReadDirEx() (#7045)
• /vsicurl/ and related file systems: add compatibility with HTTP/2 (requires recent enough curl, buit against nghttp2). Can be controlled with the GDAL_HTTP_VERSION=1.0/1.1/2/2TLS
• /vsicurl/: fix 2.2 regression regarding retrieval of file size of FTP file (#7088)
• /vsicurl/: when stat'ing a file, fallback from HEAD to GET if the server issues a 405 error
• Add a VSICurlClearCache() function (bound to SWIG as gdal.VSICurlClearCache()) to be able to clear /vsicurl/ related caches (#6937)
• CPLHTTPSetOptions(): use SearchPathA() for curl-ca-bundle.crt on Windows. See ​https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1538
• CPLHTTPFetch() / vsicurl: add retry on HTTP 429, and add exponential backoff logic for retry delay
• CPLHTTPFetch(): when openssl is enabled, and used by libcurl, use openssl thread safety mechanism to avoid potential crashes in multithreading scenarios
• CPLHTTPFetch(): add a SSL_VERIFYSTATUS option / GDAL_HTTP_SSL_VERIFYSTATUS configuration option to check OCSP stapling
• CPLHTTPFetch(): add a USE_CAPI_STORE option / GDAL_HTTP_USE_CAPI_STORE configuration option to use certificates from the Windows certificate store
• Ignore SIGPIPE that may arose during curl operations (mostly when using OpenSSL for TLS)
• Add CPLHTTPMultiFetch() and CPLMultiPerformWait()
• /vsis3/: support reading credentials from ~/.aws/credentials, ~/.aws/config or IAM role on EC2 instances
• /vsis3/: properly handle cases where a directory contains a file and subdir of same names; implement Mkdir() and Rmdir()
• /vsis3/: fix Seek(Tell(), SEEK_SET) fails if current position is not 0 (#7062)
• /vsis3/: properly handle 307 TemporaryRedirection (#7116)
• /vsis3/: fix support of bucket names with dot in them (#7154)
• /vsis3/: make multipart upload work with Minio
• /vsigs/: add new authentication methods using OAuth2 refresh token or service account or Google Compute Engine VM authentication, or using ~/.boto file
• /vsigs/: add write, Unlink(), Mkdir() and Rmdir() support
• /vsigs/: allow authentication to be done with the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS configuration option pointing to a JSon file containing OAuth2 service account credentials
• /vsis3/ and /vsigs/: take into account user provided x-amz- / x-goog- HTTP headers with GDAL_HTTP_HEADER_FILE
• Fix CPLReadDirRecursive() to behave properly on /vsis3/ buckets that have foo (file) and foo/ (sub-directory) entries (#7136)
• /vsis3/: add a AWS_NO_SIGN_REQUEST=YES configuration option to disable request signing (#7205)
• /vsis3, /vsigs, /vsioss, /vsiaz: fix support of non-ASCII characters in keys (#7143)
• Add VSIGetActualURL(), typically to expand /vsis3/ paths to full URLs, and bind it to SWIG as gdal.GetActualURL()
• Add VSIGetSignedURL()
• Add VSIGetFileSystemsPrefixes() and VSIGetFileSystemOptions()
• CPLFormFilename() / CPLProjectRelativeFilename(): add /vsis3 and similar file systems to the list of filesystems requiring unix separator (github #281) ù Make CPLFormFilename() properly work with http[s:] filenames
• Add a CPLGetErrorCounter() function that can be used to test if new errors have been emitted
• Add cpl_safemaths.hpp to detect integer overflows (#6229)
• /vsigzip/: avoid trying to write a .gz.properties file on a /vsicurl/ file (#7016)
• CPLStrtod(): parse string like '-1.#IND0000000' as NaN instead of -1 (seen when looking at refs #7031, but does not fix it)
• Fix CPLCopyTree() that doesn't properly on MSVC 2015 (and possibly other platforms) (#7070)
• /vsimem/: to improve Posix compliance, do not make Seek() after end of file error out in read-only mode
• cpl_config.h.vc: define HAVE_LONG_LONG 1; cpl_port.h remove MSVC specific logic for int64 (github #264)
• /vsisparse/: make Read() detect end of file
• GDALVersionInfo("BUILD_INFO"): report if GEOS is available
• Add VSIMkdirRecursive() and VSIRmdirRecursive()
• Add CPLGetHomeDir()
• CPLSetErrorHandler(): avoid later crashes when passing a null callback (github #298)
• CPLHTTPParseMultipartMime(): make it format the pasMimePart[].papszHeaders in a standard key=value format without EOL
• CPLString: avoid std::string symbols to be exported with Visual Studio (#7254)
• I/O on Android: add support for 64-bit file operations if API level >= 24 (Android 7.0 or later) (github #339)

Core:

• add GDALDataTypeIsFloating, GDALDataTypeIsSigned, GDALDataTypeUnionWithValue, GDALFindDataType, GDALFindDataTypeForValue (github #215). Add GDALDataTypeIsInteger()
• Cleanup ARE_REAL_EQUAL() and GDALIsValueInRange() (#6945, #6946)
• Various SSE2/AVX2 optimizations for GDALCopyWords()
• GDALGCPsToGeoTransform(): add GDAL_GCPS_TO_GEOTRANSFORM_APPROX_OK=YES and GDAL_GCPS_TO_GEOTRANSFORM_APPROX_THRESHOLD=threshold_in_pixel configuration option (#6995)
• RawDataset::IRasterIO(): don't assume all bands are RawRasterBand
• GDALOpenInfo: make number of bytes read at opening configurable with GDAL_INGESTED_BYTES_AT_OPEN
• GDALCopyWholeRasterGetSwathSize(): try to use at least 10 MB for swath size
• GDALDatasetCopyWholeRaster(), GDALRasterBandCopyWholeRaster(), GDALCreateCopy(): always call AdviseRead() on the full extent of the source dataset (#7082)
• make DefaultCreateCopy() copy RAT
• Generate gcore/gdal_version.h from git date and sha for a dev version (Unix builds only)
• Add GDALDataset::Open()
• Add C++ iterators for layers, bands and features in GDALDataset
• External .ovr: make sure that ExtraSamples tag is written

Algorithms:

• Contour: make sure no 3D geometry is created unless -3d switch is defined (#336)
• Warper: revise/improver how working data type is inferred from other parameters
• Warper: when operating on single-band, skip target pixels whose source center pixel is nodata (2.2 regression, #7001)
• Warper: avoid blocking when number of rows is 1 and NUM_THREADS > 1 (#7041). Also limit the number of threads so that each one processes at least 65536 pixels
• Warper: use AdviseRead() when source chunks are sufficiently compact (#7082)
• Warper: fix rounding error in scale factor computation (github #273)
• Warper: use panSrcBands[0] in the single band case (regression fix, github #295)
• Warper: add very special case to handle situation where input raster edge touches dateline, but proj.4 transformation involves a discontinuity (#7243)
• Geoloc transformer: fix systematic pixel shift (github #244)
• RPC transformer: set output coordinates to HUGE_VAL when failure occurs, so that a following coordinate transformation can detect the error too (#7090)
• RPC transformer: return NULL at instantiation if the specified RPC_DEM file cannot be opened
• Export GDALRegisterTransformDeserializer() and GDALUnregisterTransformDeserializer() (#5392)
• GDALRasterize(): avoid hang in some cases with all_touched option (#5580)
• Optimize GDALResampleConvolutionVertical() and GDALPansharpenOperation::WeightedBroveyPositiveWeightsInternal() for SSE2 / AVX
• Overview / resampling: speed-up bicubic upsampling for SSE2
• GDALGrid() with linear algorithm: avoid assertions/segmentation fault when GDALTriangulationFindFacetDirected() fails (#7101)
• GDALComputeProximity(): fix int32 overflow when computing distances on large input datasets (#7102)
• GDALAllRegister(): make sure that all drivers that need to look for sidecar files are put at the end

Utilities:

• GDAL and OGR C++ and Python utilities: accept -f or -of to specify output format
• --optfile: re-parse inlined content with GDALGeneralCmdLineProcessor(), in particular to support --config key value in option file
• gdalsrsinfo: for consistency with other output, do not quote the proj.4 string output
• gdal_rasterize: fix segfault when rasterizing onto a raster with RPC (#6922)
• gdal_rasterize: add a -to option to specify transformer options
• gdal_rasterize / GDALRasterizeGeometries(): optimize rasterization for large number of small geometries (#5716)
• gdal_rasterize: fix crash in some situations with ALL_TOUCHED option (#7176)
• gdaladdo: support not specifying explicitly overview factors, and add -minsize option
• gdal_translate: add -a_scale / -a_offset (#7093)
• gdal_translate: add -colorinterp / -colorinterp_X options
• DefaultCreateCopy()/gdal_translate: do not destroy target file in case of failed copy wen using -co APPEND_SUBDATASET=YES (#7019)
• gdal_translate: make -b mask[,xx] use the appropriate band data type (#7028)
• gdal_translate property copy RAT (or not-copy RAT when -norat is specified)
• gdalwarp: make -crop_to_cutline works when RPC transform is involved
• gdalwarp: for RPC warping add a few extra source pixels by default
• gdalwarp: -crop_to_cutline: reduce number of iterations to find the appropriate densification (#7119)
• gdalwarp: do not set implicitly nodata on destination dataset when -dstalpha is specified (#7075)
• gdalwarp: display errors (such as invalid open options) on successful opening of destination dataset
• gdalwarp: fix "-dstnodata inf" (#7097)
• gdalwarp: fix when several input datasets with different SRS are specified, and no explicit target SRS is provided (#7170)
• gdalwarp: make sure to try to redefine the destination nodata value from the source nodata even if the newly created dataset has already set a default nodata value (#7245)
• gdalwarp: improve progress meter when using multiple source files. For GDALWarp() function, make sure that the progress goes monotonically from 0 to 1. (#352)
• gdal2tiles.py: fix GDAL 2.2 regression where tilemapresource.xml was no longer generated (#6966)
• gdal2tiles: add --processes=intval option to parallelize processing (#4379)
• gdalinfo --format / ogrinfo --format: report extra metada items in a 'Other metadata items:' section (#7007)
• gdalinfo: make sure to display geodetic coordinates always in degree (and not potentially in another unit such as grad) (#4198)
• gdalinfo: report 'Mask Flags: PER_DATASET NODATA' when NODATA_VALUES metadata item is specified
• gdal_edit.py: add a -colorinterp_X red|green|blue|alpha|gray|undefined option to change band color interpretation
• gdal_contour: return with non-0 code if field creation or contour generation failed (#7147)
• gdal_retile.py: fix failure if the filename contains % (percent) symbol (#7186)
• gdalbuildvrt: make warnings about heterogeneous projection/band characteristics more explicit (#6829)
• gdalbuildvrt: add support for band scale and offset (#3221)
• gdal_fillnodata.py, gdal_pansharpen.py, gdal_polygonize.py, gdal_proximity.py, gdal_sieve.py, rgb2pct.py: avoid potential problem on Windows in verbose mode (github #458)

Sample Python scripts:

• Add gdal_mkdir.py, gdal_rm.py and gdal_rmdir.py samples scripts
• gdalcopyproj.py: fix use of GCP related API (github #255)
• ogr2vrt.py: automatically set relativeToVRT=1 for input and output filenames givn in relative form in the same directory

Multi driver changes:

• tag (and do needed changes) CALS, FUJIBAS, PAUX, SGI, RS2, GXF, TERRAGEN, Rasterlite, CPG, MSGN, Leveller as supporting GDAL_DCAP_VIRTUALIO

AIGRID:

• fix handling on raw 32-bit AIG blocks (#6886)

BT driver:

• make GetNoDataValue()/SetNoDataValue() use PAM

DIMAP driver:

• do not report dummy geotransform (see ​https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2018-January/048014.html)

DTED driver:

• Support VerticalCS for DTED and SRTM drivers when REPORT_COMPD_CS config option is set (github #237)

ECW driver:

• fix Windows compilation against old ECW SDK and VS < 2015 (#6943)
• make AdviseRead() to store its call parameters, and only do the actual work in RunDeferredAdviseRead() if TryWinRasterIO() determines that the IRasterIO() parameters are compatible of the AdviseRead() ones (#7082)
• data/ecw_cs.wkt: fix PRIMEM of MONTROME (#2340)

EHdr driver:

• support reading/writing .clr as/from RAT (#3253)

ENVI driver:

• support 'major frame offsets' keyword (#7114)

ERS driver:

add extension metadata (github #320)

GeoPackage driver:

• update from 'tiled gridded extension' to now OGC approved 'tiled gridded coverage data extension' (OGC 17-066r1) (#7159)
• avoid corruption of gpkg_tile_matrix when building overviews, down to a level where they are smaller than the tile size (#6932)
• fix opening subdatasets with absolute filenames on Windows (​https://issues.qgis.org/issues/16997)
• fix possible assertion / corruption when creating a raster GeoPackage (#7022)
• properly handle non-0 nodata value in edge tiles, especially with TILING_SCHEME creation option
• do not write empty tiles for Float32 data type
• speed-up statistics retrieval on non-Byte datasets (#7096)
• make DELLAYER:rastertable / DROP TABLE rastertable delete the table and all references to it (#7013)
• create single tiled TIFF tiles if they are not bigger than 512x512 pixels
• avoid multi-threading issues when creating TIFF tiles with GDAL_NUM_THREADS defined.

GeoRaster driver:

• handle memory allocation failures (#6884)
• add support for GCP (#6973)

GTiff driver:

• add support for ZSTD compression/decompression (requires internal libtiff, or libtiff HEAD)
• when IRasterIO() realizes that several blocks are going to be needed, use MultiRangeRead() interface for /vsicurl/ related file systems to get data in parallel
• change default value of BIGTIFF_OVERVIEW to be IF_SAFER (github #231)
• make sure that -co PHOTOMETRIC=RGB overrides the color interpretation of the first 3 bands of the source datasets (#7064)
• allow modifying color interpretation on existing file opened in update mode
• Internal libtiff: resync with upstream HEAD (post 4.0.9)
• Internal libgeotiff: resync with upstream HEAD: use ProjScaleAtCenterGeoKey for CT_Mercator if ProjScaleAtNatOriginGeoKey is not set (github #296)
• fix compilation without BIGTIFF_SUPPORT (#6890)
• fix reading subsampled JPEG-in-TIFF when block height = 8 (#6988)
• when reading a COMPD_CS (and GTIFF_REPORT_COMPD_CS=YES), set the name from the GTCitationGeoKey (#7011)
• on reading use GeogTOWGS84GeoKey to override the defaults TOWGS84 values coming from EPSG code (#7144)
• when writing SRS, do not drop EXTENSION PROJ4 node if the projection is unknown (#7104)
• make it accept to write SetGeoTransform([0,1,0,0,0,1]) as a ModelTransformationTag, and remove particular cases with the [0,1,0,0,0,1] geotransform (#1683)
• warn when SetNoDataValue() is called on different bands with different values (#2083)
• add a GTIFF_HONOUR_NEGATIVE_SCALEY=YES config option that can be set to honour negative ScaleY value in GeoPixelScale tag according to the GeoTIFF specification (#4977)
• read/write Z dimension for ModelTiepointTag and ModelPixelScaleTag and translate it into/from band scale and offset, when there's a SRS with a vertical component (#7093)
• fix reading PCSCitationGeoKey (#7199)
• add support for reading and writing TIFF_RSID and GEO_METADATA GeoTIFF DGIWG tags
• use consistently multiplication/division by 257 when converting between GDAL [0,255] range to TIFF [0,65535] range for color map values (#2213)
• don't write <GDALMetadata> colorinterp when writing a file with a color table
• copy georeferencing info to PAM if the profile is not GeoTIFF

GRIB driver:

• add GRIB2 write support
• update to degrib 2.14 and g2clib 1.6.0
• add support for GRIB2 template 4.32 (github #249)
• add support for GRIB2 template '4.32 Simulate (synthetic) Satellite Product'
• add support for GRIB2 template 4.40 (Analysis or forecast at a horizontal level or in a horizontal layer at a point in time for atmospheric chemical constituents)
• update table 4.2-0-7 current (github #274)
• add support for GRIB1 products with non-zero NV (number of vertical coordinate parameters) field in GDS (NV is just ignored) (#7104)
• add support for Rotated pole LatLon projections (#7104)
• adjust the longitude range to be close to [-180,180] when possible for products whose left origin is close to 180deg. Can be controlled with the GRIB_ADJUST_LONGITUDE_RANGE=YES/NO config option, that defaults to YES (#7103)
• advertize .grb2 and .grib2 extensions in metadata
• expose product discipline of GRIB2 products in GRIB_DISCIPLINE (#5108)
• add a GRIB_PDS_TEMPLATE_ASSEMBLED_VALUES metadata items which expose a slightly higher view of GRIB_PDS_TEMPLATE_NUMBERS
• speed-up GetNoData() implementation of GRIB2 files by avoiding decompressing the data
• GRIB2: add support for Transverse Mercator, Albers Equal Area, Lambert Azimuthal projections, fixes in Mercator and Polar Stereographic support, adjustment for GS80 and WGS84 datums
• correctly read Mercator as Mercator_2SP when stdparallel1 != 0
• GRIB2: add support for Grid point data - IEEE Floating Point Data template 5.4 encoding
• GRIB2: report Section 1 / Identification section as GRIB_IDS metadata item
• fix decimal_scale_factor != 0 handling with nbits = 0 for simple packing and JP2K compression/decompression, and PNG compression.
• GRIB2: don't error out on a unhandled template in Section 4
• remove TDLPack support

GSAG driver:

• fix reading issue that could cause a spurious 0 value to be read and shift all following values (#6992)

GTX driver:

• do not emit error when opening with GDAL_PAM_ENABLED=NO (#6996)

GRC driver:

• Fix handling of alpha values in GRC color table (#6905)
• Handle case of 0-len GRC class names (#6907)

HDF5 driver:

• Added CInt16, CInt32, CFloat32, CFloat64 support (github #359)
• HDF5 driver as a plugin: register the BAG driver as well (#5802)

HF2 driver:

• creation: copy source information (including nodata) into PAM if needed (#6885)
• fix reading tiles that are 1-pixel wide (2.1 regression, #6949)

HFA driver:

• add GDAL_HFA_OVR_BLOCKSIZE configuration option to control HFA overviews block size (github #292)

HTTP driver:

• do not open the underlying dataset with GDAL_OF_SHARED, to avoid later assertion

ISIS3 driver:

• make sure that -co USE_SRC_HISTORY=NO -co ADD_GDAL_HISTORY=NO results in remove of History section (#6968)
• fix logic to initialize underlying GeoTIFF file in IWriteBlock(), and implement Fill() (#7040)

JP2ECW driver:

• add NBITS creation option, and automatically select codestream output for .j2k extension

JP2KAK driver:

• add support fr Kakadu 7.A (#7048)
• fix lossless compression with NBITS != 8 for Byte and NBITS != 16 for UInt16
• use tile dimensions as block size up to 2048x2048 (#6941)
• make write side honour .j2k extension to generate only codestream

JP2OpenJPEG driver:

• add support for OpenJPEG 2.2 (#7002) and 2.3 (#7074). Drop support for openjpeg 2.0
• fix performance issues with small images with very small tile size, such as some Sentinel2 quicklooks (#7012)
• emit warning if GMLJP2v2 explicitly requested but georeferencing implemented

JPEG driver:

• Add compatibility with libjpeg-turbo 1.5.2 that honours max_memory_to_use
• add capability to write EXIF and GPS tags in a EXIF segment
• Internal libjpeg: provide implementation of tmpfile() that works better on Windows (#1795)
• avoid mis-identification of some SRTMHGT files as JPEG

JPEG2000 driver:

• add NBITS creation option, and automatically select codestream output for .j2k extension

KEA driver:

• add some additional metadata items (STATISTICS_HISTOBINVALUES and STATISTICS_HISTONUMBINS) (#6892)

L1B driver:

• support reading NOAA18 datasets (#7115)

MBTiles driver:

• add read/write support for Mapbox vector tiles
• support opening and creating datasets with tiles whose dimension is not 256 (#7233)
• default to opening as RGBA (#6119)

MEM driver:

• Avoid Create(foo.tif) / CreateCopy(foo.tif) on the MEM or Memory drivers to delete a 'real' foo.tif file
• add RAT support

MRF driver:

• Add Zen chunk support
• Open option to ignore decompression errors and missing data files
• delay data file creation when NOCOPY is set
• Identify MRF metadata passed as filename
• Initialize PAM better on CopyCreate, enable external mask.
• Fix for coordinates when opening single overview level
• Use input mask if available to filter input data when creating JPEG compressed files.
• Add open option to select Z-slice, also Z-slice selection in the metadata file

MrSID driver:

• add support for LTI_COLORSPACE_GRAYSCALEA and LTI_COLORSPACE_GRAYSCALEA_PM color spaces

NetCDF driver:

• avoid vector vs raster variable confusion that prevents reading Sentinel3 datasets, and avoid invalid geolocation array to be reported (#6974)
• fix raster read as nodata with Byte datatype, (valid_range={0,255} or _Unsigned = True) and negative _FillValue (#7069)
• be more tolerant on the formatting of standard parallel (space separated instead of {x,y,...} syntax), and accept up to 2/1000 error on spacing to consider a regular grid, to be able to read files provided by the national weather institute of Netherlands (KNMI) (#7086)
• on creation, attach grid_mapping attribute to all bands
• netCDF: support UTF-8 filenames on Windows (#7065)
• add support for reading files in rotated pole projection (#4285)
• behave correctly when an extra dimension of a variable has a corresponding 1D variable of different names (#7165)
• netCDF: fix bad interaction of SetNoDataValue() and SetGeoTransform()/SetProjection() for NC4/NC4C modes (#7245)

NITF driver:

• add support for NITF CCINFA TRE (github #232)
• data/nitf_spec.xml: fix location of PIAPRD TRE (github #234)
• make sure that BLOCKA_ or TRE=BLOCKA= creation option override source NITF metadata; add a USE_SRC_NITF_METADATA=YES/NO creation option; make sure that gdal_translate doesn't preserve source BLOCKA when georeferencing is modified
• fix swapped lines and samples in IMRFCA (github #289)
• allow to read single-block JPEG2000 compressed images with one dimension > 8192 pixels (fixes #407)

PCIDSK driver:

• sort overviews (#7100)

PCRaster driver:

• fix fseek/ftell for large files on Windows (#322)

PDF driver:

• add support for Poppler 0.58 (#7033)
• round to upper integer when computing a DPI such that page size remains within limits accepted by Acrobat (#7083)
• do not emit 'Cannot find GPTS object' on VP.Measure objects whose Subtype != GEO

PDS driver:

• map STEREOGRAPHIC with fabs(lat)=90 to Polar_Stereographic (#6893)

PLMosaic driver:

• update to use the new Basemaps and Mosaics API
• take into account BBOX for XYZ tiles

PNM driver:

• add .pgm and .ppm extensions in metadata

RMF driver:

• add RMF native overviews support (github #266)
• fix raster garbage values while reading sparse RMF files (github #267)
• add native overview build (github #275)
• fix NoData value update (github #312)
• fix elevation units write and update (github #314)

RRASTER driver:

• add support for reading creator and created metadata items, band names and color table / RAT
• add update and create/createcopy support

SAGA driver:

• add support for .sg-grd-z files (github #228)

Sentinel2 driver:

• make sure that the True Color Image subdatset really uses the R,G,B bands and not the R,R,R (#7251)
• add support for direct opening of .zip files of new safe_compact L1C products (#7085)

SRTMHGT driver:

• set appropriate description when opening a .hgt.zip file
• recognizes the .hgt.gz extension (#7016)
• add support for reading .SRTMSWBD.raw.zip files (GRASS #3246)

USGSDEM driver:

• properly handle southern hemisphere UTM projections (#344)

VICAR driver:

• optimize nodata handling, and map STEREOGRAPHIC with fabs(lat)=90 to Polar_Stereographic (#6893)

VRT driver:

• add option for separable kernel (github #216)
• warn if band attribute of VRTRasterBand is not the one expected
• implement FlushCache()
• fix use of VRTs that point to the same source in multi-threaded scenarios (#6939)
• Warped VRT: correctly take into account cutline for implicit overviews; also avoid serializing a duplicate CUTLINE warping options in warped .vrt (#6954)
• Warped VRT: fix implicit overview when output geotransform is not the same as the transformer dst geotransform (#6972)
• fix IGetDataCoverageStatus() in the case of non-simple sources, which unbreaks gdalenhance -equalize (#6987)
• re-apply shared='0' on sources if existing in original VRT when rewriting it due to invalidation
• avoid error being emitted when opening a VRTRawRasterBand in a .zip files (#7056)
• implement VRTDataset::AdviseRead() (in the particular case of a single source) (#7082)
• allow to incorporate a warped VRT as CDATA in the SourceFileName field of a regular VRT
• VRTDerivedRasterBand: fix detection of Python runtime already loaded when more than 100 modules are linked. Fixes QGIS3 use case (#7213)
• add RAT support
• for consistency, make sure that VRT intermediate datatype demotion is done, e.g that a VRT band of type Byte, with a source of type Float32, requested as Float32 buffer involves Float32 -> Byte -> Float32 conversions

WCS driver:

• add support for WCS 2.0
• add caching
• add various open options

WMS driver:

• ArcGIS miniserver: use latestWkid and wkt metadata (#6112)
• avoid AdviseRead() to download too many tiles at once (#7082)
• recognize /ImageServer?f=json ESRI endpoints
• Add support for maximum size and expiration time and unique per dataset name for WMS cache

XYZ driver:

• fix 2.2.0 regression where the driver hangs on some dataset with missing samples (#6934)
• support non numeric characters when there is an header line (#7261)

OGR 2.3.0 - Overview of Changes

Core:

• OGRLayer::FilterGeom(): make sure a feature with a null or empty geometry never matches a spatial filter (#7123)
• OGRSimpleCurve::get_LinearArea(): return 0 on a non-closed linestring (#6894)
• OGRFeature::SetField: Improve the setting for OFTInteger fields from a double.
• OGR_G_TransformTo(): emit error message when source geometry has no SRS
• OGR API SPY: various fixes
• OGRCurve::get_isClosed(): do not take into account M component (#7017)
• OGRLineString::setPoint() and addPoint() with a OGRPoint* argument. properly takes into account ZM, Z and M dimensions (#7017)
• OGRMultiSurface: refuse to add a triangle to it. (github #357)
• OGRPolyhedralSurface: importFromWkt(): remove support for invalid constructs, that contrary to comments are not supported by PostGIS
• Fix OGR[Curve]Polygon::Intersects(OGRPoint*) to return true when point is on polygon boundary (#7091)
• Emit an explicit error message for OGRGeometry::IsValid(), IsSimple(), IsRing() when GEOS is not available
• Make OGRGeometry::assignSpatialReference() a virtual method, and make implementation recursively assign the SR to child geometries (#7126)
• Expose OGRGeometry::swapXY() as OGR_G_SwapXY() in C API (#7025)
• importFromWkt(): fix import of GEOMETRYCOLLECTION ending with POINT EMPTY or LINESTRING EMPTY (#7128, 2.1 regression)
• OGRSQL: avoid silent cast so that int64->int overflow is better signaled
• OGRSQL: accept using the real FID column name (in addition to the special 'FID' alias) (#7050)
• Add GDAL_DCAP_NONSPATIAL capability to ODS, REC, XLS and XLSX drivers
• Add GDAL_DCAP_FEATURE_STYLES capability to CAD, DGN, DWG, DXF, EDIGEO, JML, KML, lIBLML, MITAB, OpenAIR and VRT drivers
• Add DMD_CREATIONFIELDDATASUBTYPES metadata type (github #278)
• OGRParseDate(): only accept seconds up to 60 included for leap seconds (#6525)
• Fix OGRPolygon::IsPointOnSurface() broken with polygons with holes
• OGRFormatDouble(): add a OGR_WKT_ROUND config option that can be set to FALSE to disable the heuristics that remove trailing 00000x / 99999x patterns (#7188)
• Add C++ iterators for feature in layer and field values in features.
• Add C++ iterators for "sub-parts" of geometry classes
• Const-correctness fixes in signatures of methods of OGRFeatureDefn, OGRFeature, OGRFieldDefn and OGRGeomFieldDefn classes.
• Fix constness of OGR_G_CreateFromWkb(), OGR_G_CreateFromFgf(), OGR_G_ImportFromWkb() and related C++ methods
• Fix const correctness of OGRGeometry::importFromWkt() and OGRGeometryFactory::createFromWkt(), and add compatibility wrappers

OGRSpatialReference:

• Update to EPSG v9.2 (#7125)
• Update data/esri_extra.wkt and add data/esri_epsg.wkt, taken from ​https://github.com/Esri/projection-engine-db-doc (Apache v2 license) (#2163)
• Add support for PROJ.5 new API (requires proj 5.0.1 or later)
• Add a OSRFindMatches() function to look for equivalent SRS in the EPSG database, map it to SWIG Python. Enhance gdalsrsinfo to use it
• Add OGRSpatialReference::convertToOtherProjection() (bound to C as OSRConvertToOtherProjection() and to SWIG) to transform between different equivalent projections (currently Merc_1SP <--> Merc_2SP and LCC_1SP <--> LCC_2SP) (#3292)
• Fix OGRSpatialReference::IsSame() to return FALSE when comparing EPSG:3857 (web_mercator) and EPSG:3395 (WGS84 Mercator) (#7029)
• importFromProj4(): implement import of Hotine Oblique Mercator Two Points Natural Origin, and fix OGRSpatialReference::Validate() for that formulation (#7042)
• morphFromESRI(): fix remapping from DATUM = D_S_JTSK + PRIMEM = Ferro to OGC DATUM System_Jednotne_Trigonometricke_Site_Katastralni_Ferro
• Add alternate simpler signature for OGRGeometryFactory::createFromWkt()
• Add importFromWkt(const char)

Utilities:

• ogrmerge.py: fix '-single -o out.shp in.shp' case (#6888)
• ogrmerge.py: allow using wildchar '*' in source names and use glob.glob to expand it
• ogrmerge.py: correctly guess vrt format
• ogrmerge.py: error when outputting to a existing vrt if -overwrite_ds is not specified
• ogr2ogr: fix crash when using -f PDF -a_srs (#6920)
• ogr2ogr: make -f GMT work again (#6993)
• ogr2ogr: make it fail if GetNextFeature() returned NULL with an error
• ogr2ogr: honour -select when using -addfiels
• ogr2ogr: preserve source geometry field name for output drivers that support GEOMETRY_NAME layer creation option (such as GPKG)
• ogr2ogr: add support for circularstring, compoundcurve, curvepolygon, multicurve and multisurface in SetZ()
• GDALVectorTranslate(): fix converting from Memory to Memory datasources (#7217)
• gnmmanage: fix crash on shape files with linestring and multilinestring geometries mixing
• ogrtindex: fix crash when using -f SQLITE -t_srs XXXX (#7053)
• ogrinfo: always open in read-only mode, unless -sql without -ro is specified

Multi driver changes:

• port/tag ILI, NAS, DGN, NTF, SDTS, OGR_GMT, Geoconcept, AVCE00, AVCBin to VirtualIO API

Amigocloud driver:

• Fixed data field types (github #246)
• Output list of datasets if dataset id is not provided.
• Implemented waiting for job to complete on the server. This will improve write to AmigoCloud reliability.
• Add HTTP user agent (github #263)
• add OVERWRITE open option (github #268)

AVCE00 driver:

• Make sure AVCE00 opens .e00 files and not AVCBIN one

AVCBin driver:

• fix 2.1 regression regarding attributes fetching (#6950)

Carto driver:

• fix append mode by retrieving the sequence name for the primary key (#7203)
• fix insertion with ogr2ogr -preserve_fid (#7216)
• fix missing features when iterating over a SQL result layer with pagination (#6880)

CSV driver:

• add a STRING_QUOTING=IF_NEEDED/IF_AMBIGUOUS/ALWAYS layer creation option, that defaults to IF_AMBIGUOUS (quote strings that look like numbers)
• temporarily disable spatial and attribute filter when rewriting CSV file (#7123)
• fix autodetection of types when a Real value is followed by a Integer64 one (#343)

DGNv8 driver:

• add support for building against static library (#7155)

DXF driver:

• Support LEADER and MULTILEADER entities (#7111, #7169)
• Support HELIX and TRACE entities
• Support spline hatch boundaries
• Support MLINE entity
• Support rows/columns within INSERT
• Add support for block attributes (ATTRIB entities) (#7139)
• Support text styles (#7151)
• Support cylinders (CIRCLE entities with thickness)
• set dx and dy to DXF LABEL style string on TEXT and MTEXT objects (github #225)
• fix reading of hatches with boundaries that contain elliptical arcs (#6971)
• fix reading files where INSERT is the last entity and DXF_MERGE_BLOCK_GEOMETRIES is false (#7006)
• fix ordering of vertices in a SOLID entity (#7089)
• only apply certain escaping rules to the text of the MTEXT object (#7047)
• Handle all known MTEXT escapes; allow user to turn off text unescaping (fixes #7122)
• do not apply the OCS transformation for MTEXT (#7049)
• do not output dx and dy in MTEXT style strings (#7105)
• apply DXF codepage encoding while decoding ExtendedEntity field (#5626)
• allow user to set the tolerance used when joining parts of a hatch boundary with a DXF_HATCH_TOLERANCE config option, and default to 1e-7 of the extent of the geometry (#7005)
• refactor out block insertion to its own function, and transform insertion point of an INSERT entity into OCS (#7077)
• on write side, force 'defpoints' layer to be non-displayed (#7078)
• entities on layer 0 within a block should inherit the style of the layer the INSERT is on. Do that for entities with a PEN style string for now. (#7099)
• OCS fixes for HATCH and INSERT entities (#7098)
• defer inlining of blocks until actually required (#7106)
• Read DIMSTYLEs and block record handles
• Handle linetype scales (#7129)
• mproved support for DIMENSION entities (#7120)
• handle ByBlock colors (#7130)
• Fix parsing of complex linetypes (#7134)
• Correct color for ByBlock text features; respect hidden objects (#5592, #7099, #7121)
• Make ACAdjustText also transform text width and offset (#7151)
• Honor block base points (#5592)
• Use BRUSH style tool instead of PEN when reading polygonal SOLIDs and leader arrowheads; add PEN style string to 3DFACE
• Specify ground units for TEXT dx and dy style values; interpret dx and dy in the writer
• Fix bug in text style property retrieval; handle text color in DIMENSION fallback renderer
• Write text styles and HATCH elevations; fix output of invalid extent values (#7183)
• Allow access to unused entity group codes with RawCodeValues field (github #226)
• Reduce the size of header.dxf and trailer.dxf (tested with AutoCAD, QCAD Teigha, QCAD dxflib, FME)
• Make the writer aware of linetype scaling
• Don't force elevation to zero in smooth polylines (#7200)
• Always output all edges in polyface mesh, and add styling (#7219)
• Remove incorrect OCS transformation from MLINE entities
• Introduce 3D extensible mode to allow translation of 3D entities

ESRIJson driver:

• "New": extracted from code previously in GeoJSON driver
• avoid endless looping on servers that don't support resultOffset (#6895)
• use 'latestWkid' in priority over 'wkid' when reading 'spatialReference' (github #218)
• recognize documents that lack geometry fields (#7071)
• do not attempt paging requests on a non-HTTP resource
• recognize documents starting with a very long fieldAliases list (#7107)

FileGDB driver:

• remove erroneous ODsCCreateGeomFieldAfterCreateLayer capability declaration (github #247)
• add LAYER_ALIAS layer creation option (#7109)
• FileGDB / OpenFileGDB: attempt to recover EPSG code using FindMatches()
• FileGDB / OpenFileGDB: linearize Bezier curves with a more reasonable number of points

GeoJSON driver:

• Add support for json-c v0.13 (github #277)
• support loading (true) GeoJSON files of arbitrary size (#6540)
• in update mode, support appending features, in some cases, without ingesting features of existing file into memory
• writer: accept writing ZM or M geometry by dropping the M component (#6935)
• fix 2.2 regression regarding lack of setting the FeatureCollection CRS on feature geometries (fixes ​https://github.com/r-spatial/sf/issues/449#issuecomment-319369945)
• make sure that -lco WRITE_NAME=NO works even if the native data has a 'name' attribute
• ignore 'properties' member of features whose value is null or empty array
• fix writing of id with RFC7946=YES (#7194)
• add ID_FIELD and ID_TYPE layer creation options

GeoPackage driver:

• default to version 1.2 (#7244)
• speed-up loading of databases with hundreds of layers
• make driver robust to difference of cases between table_name in gpkg_contents/gpkg_geometry_columns and name in sqlite_master (#6916)
• fix feature count after SetFeature() with sqlite < 3.7.8 (#6953)
• do not error out if extent in gpkg_contents is present but invalid (#6976)
• avoid GetFeature() to hold a statement, that can cause database locking issues (​https://issues.qgis.org/issues/17034)
• emit warning when feature geometries are not assignable to layer geometry type
• remove UNIQUE keyword for PRIMARY KEY of gpkg_metadata (doesn't hurt, but just to align with the examples of DDL in the GeoPackage spec)
• fix logic to detect FID on SQL result layer when several FID fields are selected (#7026)
• fix handling of spatial views
• do not try to update extent on gpkg_contents after GetExtent() on a empty layer of a datasource opened in read-only mode
• when inserting a SRS with a non-EPSG code, then avoid using srs_id that could be later assigned to a EPSG code
• when deleting a layer, delete from gpkg_metadata metadata records that are only referenced by the table we are about to drop
• fix incorrect rtree_<t>_<c>_update3 trigger statement (​https://github.com/opengeospatial/geopackage/issues/414)
• fix definition of extensions
• only create metadata table if needed, and register it as extension
• declare gpkg_crs_wkt extension when using GPKG_ADD_DEFINITION_12_063=YES config option, and do not emit warning when finding it declared

GeoRSS driver:

• fix detection of field type (#7108)

GML driver:

• CreateGeometryFromGML(): accept gml:Arc with odd number of points > 3, even if they are invalid
• decode gml:Solid as PolyhedralSurface (#6978)
• JPGIS FGD v4: fix logic so that coordinate order reported is lon/lat (github #241)
• a GML_FEATURE_COLLECTION=YES/NO dataset creation option
• fix FORCE_SRS_DETECTION=YES effect on feature count and SRS reporting on gml files with .gfs (#7046)
• do not try to open some kml files (#7061)
• do not report gml:name / gml:description of features as layer metadata

GMLAS driver:

• get the srsName when set on the srsName of the gml:pos of a gml:Point (#6962)
• CityGML related fixes: better take into account .xsd whose namespace prefix is not in the document, fix discovery of substitution elements, handle gYear data type (#6975)
• properly interpret SolidPropertyType (#6978)
• handle GML geometries in elements that are a substitutionGroup of an element (#6990)
• make sure to try namespaces that are indirectly imported (helps in the case of parsing the result of a WFS GetFeature request)
• take into account gYearMonth XML data type (​https://github.com/BRGM/gml_application_schema_toolbox/issues/46)
• implement resolution of internal xlink:href='#....' references (​https://github.com/BRGM/gml_application_schema_toolbox/issues/31)
• Recognize gml:Envelope as a Polygon geometry (​https://github.com/BRGM/gml_application_schema_toolbox/issues/56#issuecomment-381967784)

GMT:

• fix creation of several layers

IDB driver:

• optimize spatial query using spatial index and st_intersects function (#6984)
• close connection at dataset closing (#7024)

ILI driver:

• declare OLCCreateField and OLCSequentialWrite capabilities

Ingres driver:

JML driver:

• add support for reading and write SRS from gml:Box element (#7215)

KML driver:

• KML / LIBKML: read documents with an explicit kml prefix (#6981)
• KML/LIBKML: make sure layer names are unique (QGIS github#5415)

LIBKML driver:

• fix reading placemarks in toplevel container, when it has subfolders (#7221)
• improve open performance on huge number of layers

MDB driver:

• fix multi-thread support (​https://issues.qgis.org/issues/16039)

MITAB driver:

• support for additional datums (#5676)
• add support for Reseau_National_Belge_1972 / EPSG:31370 on writing (#6903)
• add support for SWEREF99 datum (#7256)
• fix EPSG datum code for NTF Paris
• support units as code instead of string when reading a coordsys string from a .mif (#3590)
• add read/write support between MapInfo text encodings and UTF-8. Add ENCODING layer/dataset creation option (github #227)
• do not emit error if the .ind file is missing, just a debug message (#7094)
• accept creating files with LCC_1SP SRS (#3292)
• support 'CREATE INDEX ON layer_name USING field_name' (if called after field creation and before first feature insertion)
• avoid reporting invalid extent on empty .mif
• report aspatial .tab as wkbNone geometry type

mongoDB driver:

• compilation fix on Windows

MSSQLSpatial driver:

• Fix issues on x64 (#6930)
• Implement EXTRACT_SCHEMA_FROM_LAYER_NAME layer creation option.
• properly format DELETE statement with schema (#7039)

MySQL:

• fix compilation issue with MariaDB 10.1.23 (#6899) and MariaDB 10.2 (#7079)
• make sure geometry column name is properly set (GDAL 2.0 regression, github #397)

NAS driver:

• [NAS/GML] try reversing non contiguous curves
• Allow usage of a GFS template file for type assignment and mapping of element paths to attributes and remove arbitrary hacks that used to avoid attribute name conflicts:
• New option: NAS_GFS_TEMPLATE: specify gfs template
• New option: NAS_NO_RELATION_LAYER: skip unused alkis_beziehungen (also makes progress available)
• Multiple geometries per layer
• NAS_INDICATOR updated to "NAS-Operationen;AAA-Fachschema;aaa.xsd;aaa-suite"
• use single geometry column name from input (like GMLAS)
• accept unqualified attribute name in wfs:Update

NTF driver:

• fix regression introduced by fix for ​https://bugs.chromium.org/p/oss-fuzz/issues/detail?id=2166 causing some valid records to be skipped (#7204)

NULL driver:

• Generalize OGR NULL development driver as a GDAL raster+vector one; enable to compile it --with-null

OCI driver:

• initialize in multi-threaded compatible mode (​https://issues.qgis.org/issues/17311)
• support for extended max_string_size (#7168)

ODBC driver:

• deal with table names that require double quoting (#7242)

ODS driver:

• add read/write support for Boolean sub datatype

OSM driver:

• performance improvements
• increase string buffer for osm XML files (#6964)
• OGR_SQL/OSM: avoid OSM driver warning about attribute filter not being taken into account when issuing a 'select * from X limit Y' request on a OSM datasource

OpenFileGDB driver:

• properly read GeneralPolygon with M component whose all values are set to NaN (#7017)

PDF driver:

• make OGR_PDF_READ_NON_STRUCTURED=YES configuration option work with documents without layers (#6359)
• Improvements to text and dash pattern support in writer (#7185)

PG driver:

• do not be confused by a 'geometry' table in a non-PostGIS enabled database (#6896)
• PG/PGDump: make sure serial sequence is updated at layer closing/end-of-copy if we inserted features with fixed ids (#7032)

PLScenes driver:

• remove support for V0 and V1 API. Only Data V1 is kept (#6933)
• add SkySatScene

SEGY driver:

*report more attributes from Segy Standard Trace Header (github #315)

Shapefile driver:

• Fix GetFeatureCount() to properly take into account spatial filter when attribute filter also in effect (#7123)
• use VSIStatL() in Create() to properly work with /vsimem/ directories (#6991)
• fix regression affecting GDAL 2.1.3 or later, 2.2.0 and 2.2.1, when editing the last shape of a file and growing it, and then appending a new shape, which resulted in corruption of both shapes (#7031)
• hide shapelib symbols on Unix
• improvements auto-identification of EPSG codes from input SRS, using OSRFindMatches()
• Improve guidance on use of SHAPE_RESTORE_SHX in SHPOpenLL() (#7246)

SQLite/Spatialite driver:

• SQLite/GPKG: report SQLITE_HAS_COLUMN_METADATA=YES as driver metadata item when it is available (#7007)
• escape integer primary key column name on table creation (#7007)
• don't invalidate statistics when running a PRAGMA (​https://issues.qgis.org/issues/17424)
• SQLite dialect: avoid erroring out if source layer has a OGR_STYLE field
• SQLite dialect: support SQLite 3.21, and LIKE, <>, IS NOT, IS NOT NULL, IS NULL and IS operators (fixes #7149)
• SQLite/GPKG: avoid parsing of OGR_SQLITE_JOURNAL to stop on JOURNAL_MODE keyword

VFK driver:

• fix collecting linestrings for sbp layer
• collect geometries also for zvb layer
• Improve VFK parser logic (github #365)
• add option to suppress geometry (github #371)

VRT driver:

• increase maximum size limit to 10 MB (instead of 1MB), and add config option to be able to force loading if above that

XLS driver:

• workaround opening filenames with incompatible character set on Windows (​https://issues.qgis.org/issues/9301)

XLSX driver:

• avoid 'ogr2ogr -f XLSX out.xlsx in.shp -preserve_fid' to overwrite the first record. Note however that FID preservation itself doesn't really work with XLSX (#6994)
• fix non working detection of Date/Time fields in some documents (#7073)
• fix opening of documents with x: namespace in xl/workbook.xml (#7110)
• fix misdetection of field type if first cell blank (github #291)
• fix updating multi layer document where existing layers where dropped (#7225)
• add read/write support for Boolean sub datatype
• on writing, use %.16g formatting for floating point numbers (#7230)

SWIG Language Bindings

All bindings:

• Expose gdal.VSIFEofL()
• Expose gdal.GRA_Max, GRA_Min, GRA_Med, GRA_Q1 and GRA_Q3 (#7153)
• Expose Geometry.SwapXY()
• Expose Geometry.RemoveGeometry()
• Expose SpatialReference.SetMercator2SP()
• Expose Band.AdviseRead() and Dataset.AdviseRead()

CSharp bindings:

Java bindings:

• create single JNI shared library (gdalalljni.so/dll) (github #286)

Perl bindings:

• Keep parent geometry alive if an object is created from a child geometry. Experimental methods Features and Geometries. Catch an error in storing a geometry into a feature. Prefer GeometryCount over GetGeometryCount and Geometry over GetGeometryRef.
• Set INSTALLSITEMAN1DIR and INSTALLSITEMAN3DIR according to what is in GDALmake.opt if INSTALL_BASE is set. (#6142)
• ignore no data cells in ClassCounts and Reclassify for real valued rasters.
• support for number line (or decision tree) classifiers also for integer bands.
• Set error handler separately in all modules (required by Strawberry Perl build).

Python bindings:

• add scripts to python module (#342)
• make sure that errors in Open() related functions, that do not prevent dataset opening in C/C++, do not either prevent it in Python (#7094)
• avoid hang when calling gdal/ogr.UseExceptions()/DontUseExceptions() in wrong order (#6891)
• accept callback = 0 since SWIG generates it as the default argument of BandRasterIONumPy(). (github #219)
• fix 2.2.0 regression preventing use of callback function in Band.ComputeStatistics() (#6927)
• fix reference count issue on gdal.VSIStatL() when it returns None, that can cause Python crashes if None refcount drops to zero
• avoid potential cross-heap issue on Windows with numpy (​https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/ticket/466)
• fix potential alignment issues when reading double values with ReadRaster() or ReadBlock()
• fix issue with PyInstaller (#7044)
• add a addAlpha option to gdal.DEMProcessing()
• fix for include files when building .cpp files (github #258)
• make gdal.Transform() return None in case of an error (instead of an invalid Transformer object)
• emit exceptions if VSI_RETVAL methods (such as gdal.Rename()) fail and gdal.UseExceptions() is enabled
• add addFields and forceNullable options to gdal.VectorTranslate()
• for command line utilities as functions, serialize number of floating-point arguments with higher precision
• Fix python 3.x package installation in custom prefixes (#6671)
• lots of PEP8-related fixes in scripts and autotest
• add NULL checks after PyUnicode_AsUTF8String() in case the unicode cannot be translated to UTF-8 and workaround SWIG bug to avoid crashes with Python 3. (github #356)
• make sure gdal.VectorTranslate() and gdal.Grid() open their source dataset with a vector driver (github #449)
• make 'for field_val in feature' work (github #451)