GRASS GIS 7.8.0

A short summary of changes: New features in GRASS 7.8

Releases

Stable Release

• Release date: 6 Sep 2019
• Changelog: https://grass.osgeo.org/grass78/source/ChangeLog_7.8.0.gz
• Binaries: ​https://grass.osgeo.org/download/software/#g78x
• Source code:
  • ​https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/releases/tag/7.8.0
  • https://grass.osgeo.org/grass78/source/grass-7.8.0.tar.gz (md5sum)

Release Candidate 1 (RC1)

• Release date: 14 Aug 2019
• Changelog: https://grass.osgeo.org/grass78/source/ChangeLog_7.8.0RC1.gz
• Binaries: ​https://grass.osgeo.org/download/software/#g78x
• Source code:
  • ​https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/releases/tag/7.8.0RC1
  • https://grass.osgeo.org/grass78/source/grass-7.8.0RC1.tar.gz (md5sum)

Git Source Code

• Milestone: 7.8.0
• Release branch created on 4 Aug 2019 (GH d4879d4)
• Git clone of latest 7.8 release branch (including yet unpublished bugfixes):

    git clone https://github.com/OSGeo/grass.git
    cd grass
    git checkout releasebranch_7_8
  

Overview of changes

The most important change is the new Python-3 support. Also new PROJ 5 and GDAL 2.5 with substantial changes in the API and CRS handling are supported. A series of new features and stability fixes, manual improvements, and a more language translations have been added. Importantly, the new version is backward compatible with older 7.x releases.

Breaking news: Python 3 compatibility

The GRASS GIS 7.8.0 release provides more than ​730 fixes and improvements with respect to the stable release 7.6.x.

New modules

• parser: added --json output, useful for REST API output (needed e.g. for [​​https://github.com/mundialis/actinia_core actinia])

Major module changes

(see also below for closed bugs)

• G78:grass7: major code refactoring
• G78:g.search.modules: support for installed addons added
• G78:i.pansharpen: updated i.pansharpen to handle pixel depths from 2-30 bits, and quashed some bugs
• G78:r.compress: ZLIB is no longer the default compression method but ​ZSTD compression
• G78:r.in.gdal: added info on subdatasets (relevant for MODIS, Sentinel, ... datasets)
• G78:r.mapcalc.simple: former r.mapcalculator as now as r.mapcalc.simple
• G78:v.in.pdal: use PDAL streaming instead of PointView
• G78:v.overlay: speed-up for large, complex input areas
• G78:v.patch: automagic cleaning of boundaries if areas have been patched

Minor module changes

(see also below for closed bugs)

Start script:

• G78:grass7: stop clearing the terminal upon closing; shorten GRASS prompt; do not require dev pkg to be installed for path grass --config path as well as version and svn_revision. Note that revision is currently broken due to Subversion to Git migration.
• G78:grass7: added --config svn_revision
• G78:grass7: add powershell shell support
• G78:grass7: browser = xdg-open as fallback; no browser message spam in batch jobs
• G78:grass7: clean up sqlite DB if existing upon session closing

Modules:

• G78:d.barscale: font support added (PR #72)
• G78:d.northarrow: font, path and charset parameters added
• G78:g.extension: enforce change to python3 during installation of Addon
• G78:g.extension: fix bitbucket download, assumes master branch; fixed incomplete updating addon metadata file
• G78:g.extension: update base_url to current winGRASS server layout (PR #68)
• G78:g.parser: added --json output, useful for REST API
• G78:g.proj: error handling with PROJ 6 added
• G78:g.proj: list_codes to list codes for given authority, compatible with PROJ 4, 5, 6
• G78:g.proj: need GRASS_PROJSHARE to list codes with PROJ 4
• G78:i.atcorr: Worldview4 filter functions added
• G78:i.gensig: skip NULL cells when calculating variance
• G78:i.group: Allow listing group and subgroup contents also for groups from other mapsets
• G78:i.pansharpen: added new channel stretch option; fixed rare possible bug in histogram matching algorithm and made all output maps integer CELL maps
• G78:i.segment: avoid integer overflow with extremely large regions
• G78:i.tasscap: add support for Sentinel-2
• G78:i.vi: NDWI index added (Normalized Difference Water Index)
• G78:m.nviz.script: fix memory leaks,fix compiler warnings + coverity scan
• G78:r3.out.vtk: improved error message when output cannot be written
• G78:r.compress: print which compression method is actually applied
• G78:r.contour: fix broken contour lines; clean contour lines tracing back on themselves
• G78:r.fillnulls: added memory parameter for internal r.resamp.bspline call (speed-up); do not fail hard if input map has no holes
• G78:r.horizon: check if coordinates are within the current region
• G78:r.import: remove hardcoded memory limit (r.in.gdal will take care); try to avoid failure after v.proj (see PR #24)
• G78:r.info -s: always report total number of cells
• G78:r.in.wms: add proxy for GDAL driver; catch incorrect WMS url input; new -b flag to keep original bands
• G78:r.li: fix segfault in r.li.shannon
• G78:r.out.mpeg: fix fail because the output file name is empty
• G78:r.plane: added function float_or_dms
• G78:r.random.cells: use G_drand48()
• G78:r.random.surface: use G_drand48()
• G78:r.slope.aspect: fix window alignment to input raster
• G78:r.sun: fix error when using both lat and lon raster
• G78:r.thin: avoid integer overflow
• G78:r.univar: report stats with nan if a given zone has only NULL values
• G78:r.walk: add option nearest from r.cost
• G78:r.watershed: multiple flow direction output
• G78:v.buffer: added test for zero distance
• G78:v.distance: improve iterative search; speed improvement for small dmax
• G78:v.external: enable GRASS-internal PostGIS driver again
• G78:v.generalize: preserve boundary categories
• G78:v.in.geonames: read as UTF8
• G78:v.in.ogr: disable unreliable OGR extents for spatial filter
• G78:v.in.ogr: set spatial filter to correct geometry field if geom option is given
• G78:v.mkgrid: new -d flag to add diagonals to rectangular lines
• G78:v.out.postgis: document a bug, output option is ignored for attributes
• G78:v.rast.stats: add where option
• G78:v.report: Add -d flag for geometries with no database records
• G78:v.report: added -c flag to avoid column names in output
• G78:v.to.points: new option use=start/end
• G78:v.to.rast: do not create raster categories if vector categories are used as cell values because 1. Rast_set_cat() is terribly slow for many categories, 2. this information is redundant (1: 1 etc is not informative)
• G78:v.voronoi: fix for area skeletons and voronoi diagrams for areas. Numerical stability of v.voronoi has been improved but is not perfect.

Improvements in the Graphical User Interface

• wxGUI data catalog: allow to perform actions on multiple layers (e.g. deleting, moving, reprojection, display, metadata)
• wxGUI/animation: fixes for Python 3
• wxGUI/digitizer: fixes for Python 3
• wxGUI/modeller: fixes for Python 3
• wxGUI: add function to LM interface to programmatically change layer
• wxGUI: add GeoPackage as known raster/vector format
• wxGUI: fix setting non-ascii display name
• wxGUI/psmap: wxPython 4 compatibility
• wxGUI: use g.proj list_codes=EPSG to read EPSG codes

Python scripting

Python 2 end-of-life: ​https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/

GRASS GIS has been updated to Python 3:

• all python scripts: change Python shebang to python3 (PR #75, #82)
• pygrass: fixing doctests (only for Python 3)
• pygrass.gis: make region importable from grass.pygrass.gis
• pythonlib: fix encoding

Projection support

• libproj: code clean-up; PROJ5: EPSG must lowercase epsg, PROJ6+: EPSG must uppercase EPSG

Database support

• postgresql driver: create index if not exists for PG server versions 9.5+

Library changes

• configure, configure.in: configure with ZSTD by default, can be disabled with --with-zstd=no
• ctypes: delete lib/python/ctypes/ctypesgencore/parser/lextab.py (#95)- since lextab.py is auto-generated
• libpython: float_or_dms accept E,W,N,S
• libraster: add support for GDAL 2.4 on MS Windows
• libraster: fsync data files before closing, and capture any errors; sync_and_close() null file; no fsync check for corrupt raster data on Windows
• libsegment: fix for all-in-memory cache
• libvector: support reserved PostgreSQL keywords as column name by quoting when exporting vector map to PostGIS database; Vect_cidx_find_all() should not allow mixing GV_AREA with other geometries
• parser: added --json output, useful for REST API output (needed e.g. for ​actinia)
• Vlib: adjust dynamic floating point representation error for squared distances
• Vlib: fix fp error in Vect_segment_intersection()

Unit tests / CI

• testsuite/examples/test_framework_GRASS_GIS_with_NC.sh: major cleanup
• various modules: test added and respective testsuites cleaned up
• Travis-CI: enable ccache for faster builds
• Codecov: Attempt to add Codecov support for automated source code quality checks (​https://codecov.io/gh/OSGeo/grass)

User Manuals - Documentation

• various manual pages: examples added/updated

Portability

• Python-3 support implemented across the tree

Docker support

• Various docker images listed at: https://grass.osgeo.org/download/software/docker-images/
• Dockerfile: updated to Python 3

Message Translations

• i18N: added new translations from Transifex (​https://www.transifex.com/grass-gis/grass7/dashboard/)
• i18N: cleanup gettext usage for Python code

New Addons since GRASS 7.6.0

• G7A:i.sar.speckle - Remove speckle from SAR image
• G7A:r.fill.category - Replaces the values of pixels of a given category with values of the surrounding pixels
• G7A:r.object.thickness - Evaluates minimum, maximum and mean thickness of objects of a given category on a raster map
• G7A:r.out.kde - Exports raster with variable transparency into an image file
• G7A:r.out.legend - Create an image file showing the legend of a raster map
• G7A:r.random.weight - Generates a binary raster layer with a random selection of raster cells depending on the weight of each cell in the input weight layer.
• G7A:r.sample.category - Create sampling points from each category in a raster map
• G7A:r.series.diversity - Compute diversity indici over input layers

Closed tickets

Closed bugs since the last release

#2708

Run GRASS with Python3

#2751

G_progress() does not support GRASS_MESSAGE_FORMAT=gui

#3170

GRASS_BATCH_JOB does not tolerate path with spaces

#3339

postgis topology: missing relations

#3446

GRASS python library is not working with python 3

#3478

g.extension does not work with bitbucket repo

#3587

Call to deprecated item in wxGUI

#3635

Suspicious use and cleanup of the mapset tempoary directory

#3641

python3/ctypes: ctypes.ArgumentError: argument 2: <type 'exceptions.TypeError'>: expected LP_struct_Cell_head instance instead of LP_struct_Cell_head

#3644

winGRASS7.7.svn: displaying raster causes: TypeError: environment can only contain strings

#3649

Cartographic composer: OK, pointer and pan buttons do not work

#3662

pygrass open vector fails in python3

#3666

wxGUI: Save to file in 3D mode fails with Unicode error

#3673

wxGUI: UnicodeEncodeError when querying vector map

#3675

g.gui.rlisetup: cannot create the configuration file

#3681

g.gui.tplot does not open

#3682

t.rast.algebra: Error wrong type of input

#3704

ctypes compilation error with Python-3.7

#3720

temporal modules fail with python 3

#3723

winGRASS7.7.svn - core.py - python 3 issues

#3725

all temporal modules produce WARNING:root:Needed to restart the libgis server

#3727

t.rast.aggregate fails with python3

#3731

winGRASS7.7.svn python3 build issues

#3733

winGRASS 7.7svn execute command fails

#3734

Location wizard on python 3 seems to be broken

#3739

lib/python/ctypes/ctypesgencore/parser/lextab.py changes after compilation.

#3746

Quouting of strings with white space in t.info breaks tests for temporal modules

#3752

g.gui.animation: TypeError: 'zip' object is not subscriptable

#3753

g.gui.tplot and g.gui.timeline: AttributeError: 'itertools.cycle' object has no attribute 'next'

#3755

error when saving workspace in python 3

#3757

Python3: range vs xrange

#3777

vector digitizer crashes with python 3

#3797

r.horizon suffix gets messed up in multi-direction mode

#3798

Python 3: gunittest multirunner.py crashes

#3802

grass77: g.proj compilation fails with proj 5.2.0

#3803

g.extension: Import requests for python3, too

#3805

Export vector map (table with column name, which is reserved PostgreSQL keyword) into the PostGIS database

#3808

"Next" button inactive in EPSG selection page of Location wizard

#3814

v.buffer: segfault in LL

#3825

Fix tests stalling with Python 3

#3837

OSGeo4W winGRASS77svn - startup error: TypeError: endswith first arg must be bytes or a tuple of bytes, not str

#3861

winGRASS master (git) - g.proj not found at startup

#3872

winGRASS Version: 7.7.dev - wrong german Umlaut in wxGUI

#3894

g.gui.animation fails to export animation with python3 error

#3897

d.mon errors when closing

#3899

g.gui.gmodeler: loading of modeller file broken with TypeError

Closed wishes since the last release

#3491

i.group cannot read from other mapsets

#3669

graphical modeler: export UI definitions into Python script

#3719

prepare OSGeo4W environment for winGRASS 7.8 with python 3

#3738

Make python version configurable on compilation time

#3741

t.rast.series: allow multiple methods/output

#3792

Use unique names on test modules

#3844

Make Region importable from pygrass.gis

#3849

Do we need to clear the screen when entering/exiting GRASS?