Rendering large maps with only partial data available.

[nnikolov]

Backgrownd:

In our work, we render maps covering the entire world. We have mapfile describing the rules for rendering every part of the globe. Sometimes however, we want to render a region a country or a continent, without the need to having the entire mapdata set, but at the same time, using the existing mapfile (for the entire world). Mapserver has already the ability to deal with some missing data (IGNORE_MISSING_DATA compile option). However, it can’t cope with missing data for an entire layer.

Proposal:

The proposal is to implement an additional compile option (IGNORE_MISSING_LAYER) allowing the map rendering to proceed, even if an entire layer can’t be rendered. The layer will be simply ignored. The change is very simple (two lines of code) in mapdraw.c file (lines 445 and 454) and of course Makefile.(see attachments).

[nnikolov]

I would like to apologise, but I have give Makefile, which has missing changes, due to rushing to upgrade from Mapserver 5.0 to Mapserver 5.2 and not doing it the thorough way.

However, I did my best to do it methodically this time around for Mapserver 5.2. I have modified not only the Makefile files, but also the Configure files and have attached them.

Please, discard the Makefile supplied originally. Now, if the Configure file is run, it will generate the correct one from the Makefile.in.

Please, also note that I have changed Configure.in file as well (I believe in a correct way), but could not test properly the creation of the Configure file from it using Autoconf, because I have GNU Autoconf 2.59 on my CentOS system, not the Autoconf 2.61 version, used in generating the Configure file in the official Mapserver 5.2 release. I am not getting identical file, so please test Configure.in file with the correct Autoconf version.