List of new features in GRASS 7

Graphical User Interface

• wxGUI improved (see ​here)
  • Advanced GRASS command console
  • Graphical modeler
• wxWidgets version of ximgview
• Tcl/Tk stuff dropped in favour of wxPython

Display modules

• old display architecture removed including related modules
• new display architecture based on CAIRO and wxPython
• ximgview: new

General modules

• g.cairocomp: new
• g.ppmtopng: new
• g.region: new flag to export region bounding box in WMS style

Image processing

• i.albedo: new
• i.biomass: new
• i.cca: supports now much more raster maps for canonical analyses (multi-spectral (8) -> hyper-spectral (thousands)), converted from Fortran style to C-style
• i.eb.eta: new
• i.eb.evapfr: new
• i.eb.h_SEBAL01: new
• i.eb.soilheatflux: new
• i.emissivity: new
• i.evapo.time_integration: new
• i.latlong: new
• i.modis.qc: new
• i.sunhours: new
• i.vi: new

Raster modules

• r.colors.out: new
• r.external.out: new
• r.cost faster by orders of magnitude (10x - 100x)
• r.neighbours: added new option to process only marked cells (i.e: selective elevation map improvement)
• r.walk faster by orders of magnitude (10x - 1000x)
• r.mapcalc: use pthreads for parsing
• r.resamp.filter: new - resamples raster map layers using an analytic kernel
• r.solute.transport: new; New module to compute the solute transport of groundwater in porous media using an implicit finite volume approach
• r.statistics2: new
• r.statistics3: new
• r.uslek: new
• r.usler: new
• r.watershed improved from G6.3 to G6.4 to G6.5 to G7: faster, less memory, floating point DEM support, MFD, clean stream extraction from MFD, segmented mode in G7 faster than in G6 by orders of magnitude (segmented mode in G7 only a bit slower than all-in-ram mode of G6.4)
• r.gwflow/r3.gwflow: Groundwater flow module update
• Large File Support (LFS) globally enabled

Vector modules

• v.krige: new
• v.net.distance: new
• v.net.bridge: new
• v.net.spanningtree: new
• v.net.flow: new
• v.net.connectivity: new
• v.net.timetable: new
• v.net.components: new
• v.net.allpairs: new
• v.net.centrality: new
• v.in.ogr faster for polygon-import, cleaner output
• v.out.ogr: reversed functionality of -c flag to preserve island by default
• Large File Support (LFS) globally enabled

Scripts

• All Bash scripts converted to Python
• Initialization scripts also based on Python

Libccmath

• new library for numerical functions

Libdbmi

• SQLite is now default database driver
• Added support for OFTDate, OFTTime, OFTDateTime

Libgis

• WPS support implemented in parser (c, c++, python, shell)
• Libraster separated out into own library
• Store metadata in $HOME/.grass7 directory

Libgmath

• Implementation of blas level 1,2 and 3 functions which are in use by all gmath solver, the gpde library and many modules.
• ATLAS wrapper for blas level 1 functions (level 2, and 3 are work in progress)

Libosgf

• WIP in OGSF - feature styling rewrite that will allow to assign custom (e.g. attribute based) style to points AND lines in NVIZ (might be extended to polys and any 3D vectors too).

Libraster

• Libraster separated out from libgis, refactored

Libvector

• Large File Support (LFS) added
• new spatial index, and spatial index kept in file: faster queries (>10x for large vectors), less memory for opening an existing vector
• cleaning functions 'break polygons' and 'snap lines' faster, less memory
• Simple Features API/OGR read/write support (ongoing)

Documentation

• Use Python to generate HTML docs

API

• Programmer's manual cleanup: ​http://download.osgeo.org/grass/grass7_progman/
• Improved Python API
  • read/write GRASS rasters to/from NumPy
• libgis supports the automatic generation of a WPS 1.0.0 process description XML document for each module (c, c++, python, shell)

Portability

• All shell scripts have been rewritten in Python
• MS-Windows portability improved, new spawn functions (backported to 6.5 and 6.4)
• MacOSX portability improved

Removed modules

• d.ask, d.colors, d.extend, d.extract, d.frame, d.mapgraph, d.measure, d.menu, d.mon, d.save, d.what.rast, d.what.vect, d.zoom (old display architecture decommissioned)
• d.histogran: integrated in wxGUI
• g.ask, g.setproj
• i.class, i.ortho.photo, i.points, i.vpoints (need to be ported; old display architecture decommissioned)
• raster:
  • r.average, r.median, r.sum merged into r.statistics, r.statistics2, r.statistics3
  • r.bilinear merged into r.resamp.interp
  • r.digit (need to be ported; old display architecture decommissioned)
  • r.le.patch, r.le.pixel, r.le.setup, r.le.trace: replaced by r.li.*
  • r.terraflow.short (FP version is sufficient)
• v.digit (new wxPython digitizer)

Renamed options

• r.fill.dir
  • input -> elevation
  • elevation -> depressionless
• r.basins.fill
  • c_map -> cnetwork
  • t_map -> tnetwork
  • result -> output
• r.flow
  • elevin -> elevation
  • aspin -> aspect
  • barin -> barrier
  • flout -> flowline
  • lgout -> flowpath
  • dsout -> density
• r.li.*
  • map -> input
• r.out.tiff
  • -t flag -> -w
• r.topmodel
  • belevation -> basin_elevation
• r.uslek
  • usle_k -> output
• r.water.outlet
  • drainage -> input
  • basin -> output
• r.sim.sediment
  • elevin -> elevation
  • dxin -> dx
  • dyin -> dy
  • detin -> det
  • tranin -> tran
  • tauin -> tau
  • manin -> man
  • maninval -> man_value
• r.sim.water
  • elevin -> elevation
  • dxin -> dx
  • dyin -> dy
  • rain_val -> rain_value
  • infil -> infil
  • infil_val -> infil_value
  • manin -> man
  • manin_val -> man_value
• r.colors.stddev
  • input -> map