Using Git with Subversion makes adding new features easy. Here are the metrics for my latest QGIS hack: SVN revisions by others while working on my branch: 177 Time to complete merge with latest SVN revision: 1 second Conflicts: None Coincidence? Maybe not.

The application deadline for the Google Summer of Code is nearing (April 9). If you are interested in working on QGIS as part of GSOC and need ideas, please see Quantum GIS Wiki. We are waiting for your proposal!

If you use Vim you probably know you can use the make command to build your project. The make command looks for a Makefile in your current directory. If you are editing a file that is not in the current directory (meaning you use some Vim magic to change to the directory containing your edit buffer), make will start below the top-level of your build directory. This is often the case when doing an out-of-source build with CMake.

At the ESRI Developer Summit there was news of the File Geodatabase (FGDB) API. Based on the tweets from the summit it appears: The API will be C++ only API works on Windows and Unix/Linux (specifically RedHat, Solaris, SuSE) operating systems Rudimentary support only—features such as annotation, relationships, topologies, etc. are lacking Since ESRI is releasing a targeted API and a not a specification, support for Mac OS X is out of the question.

It’s true—everything you have ever done is wrong. If you are a developer, look at the code you wrote five years ago—it’s wrong. If you collect and store data—it’s wrong. This is the nature of human endeavor. The world used to be flat. The earth used to be the center of the universe. Discovery and development is an iterative process. What we do today will likely be replaced tomorrow. Just because we can’t be perfect at the outset doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

In a recent post on VerySpatial.com, Jesse was discussing the apparent dominance of U*nix and observed: ‘…the geospatial industry almost completely left behind support for UNIX-like OSes’ It is true that the proprietary GIS vendors have largely abandoned Unix and Unix-like operating systems and continue to do so. However the open source GIS community has embraced all major operating systems with software that runs on Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X, and yes, Windows.

The death of the shapefile has again been predicted—this time for 2010. The technical description of the format has been around for going on 12 years. In that time it has become a sort of lowest common denominator for data exchange. They’re everywhere. Making them go away is going to require a revolution of sorts. ESRI has been sounding the death knell for the shapefile for a while now. I agree that it isn’t a perfect format but it is nearly perfectly supported.

In my last post I created a poll to get an idea of the extent of migration to open source GIS on the desktop. The results indicated that nearly 50% of the people using open source GIS were still using their proprietary software as well. You can view the results of the poll using the Polls Archive link below the current poll. This leads one to wonder if it is the state of the open source software or other reasons that prevent a full migration.

I keep seeing more evidence that many people and organizations are migrating to open source GIS on the desktop. In many cases a mix of proprietary and open source GIS is in use. I’m wondering about other’s experiences in this area. To gain some insight, I’ve created a poll (right margin). Please take a second and vote.

$ uptime 20:20:56 up 434 days, 15:31, 2 users, load average: 2.32, 0.89, 0.53

Take a look at: The Volcano and the Buffer It includes an example that uses CSV, GDAL/OGR VRT, QGIS, and fTools to figure out if I was in danger of being buried in a volcanic ash fall (not much danger but sounds dramatic).

One of the hurdles in developing a QGIS plugin with Python is just getting the basics down. Getting the plugin setup so it is recognized by QGIS and properly adds it’s menu and toolbar items can be a bit of a chore, especially the first time. To make the process easier, I put together a web tool to generate a plugin that can be used as a starting point. The tool creates a fully functional plugin that can be loaded in QGIS 1.

The recent release of QGIS 1.0 provides an excellent opportunity for developers looking to create standalone mapping applications with Python. I recently posted an article on creating a very simple standalone application with Python and QGIS 1.0. Much of the Python efforts thus far have been devoted to creating QGIS plugins. I think now that we have a stable API, you’ll begin to see more custom applications that meet a specialized need.

Looks like the ink is dry on Desktop GIS and it should start shipping soon. You can get the full scoop from the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Update: It’s now shipping. See the announcement.

After a rather long lapse, I had the occasion to write some Java code recently (mainly because it didn’t look like Howard’s PySDE was functional). I didn’t like it. Not to start a language flame war, but after using Python almost exclusively for 6 months, I found Java to be cumbersome. I kept thinking “if it were Python I could do it this way”. Sending an email from Java–frightening. From Python–simple.