GeoTools Maven Quickstart vs Build Instructions

Frank Warmerdam has a good write up of Getting Started with GeoTools - that makes for painful reading (for me at least). Looks like this is going to result in a few fixes to the documentation.

In the mean time:

• Quickstart (including Maven Quickstart) shows a simple hello world program illustrating how you can use GeoTools in your own application (to load a shapefile and display a map).
• Building (including the use of the Maven Eclipse Plugin) documents how to build GeoTools from source, and use the maven eclipse plugin to generate the .project and .classpath files required to import the projects into the Eclipse IDE.

Thanks to Frank for taking the effort to get involved with the project, and I am happy to see his first pull request come through.

Documentation Updates

Primary purpose of this blog is capturing the ebb and flow of the projects I am involved in ... and remind myself to update the documentation.

GeoTools

In response to the OSGeo board approving a Contribution License agreement for the foundation an update to the GeoTools developers guide was in order:

• Contributors (GeoTools Developers Guide)
• Comitters (GeoTools Developers Guide)

Thanks to Frank and Andrea for the review of these pages. It is my hope that having a contribution license available at the foundation level will help projects going through incubation. The documents themselves are a straight up port of the Apache Contribution licenses.

I also found "yet another page" predating our move to github:

• Creating your own Module (GeoTools Developers Guide)

GeoServer

The recent publication of GeoServer Beginner's Guide made for a great read, and a few links:

• GeoServer (Website): updated to show off the book cover and link to the publishers website
• GeoServer Beginner's Guide (LISAsoft): my review is published on the Company website.

Thank's Packt Publishing for promoting open source and Stefano Iacovella, Brian Youngblood for a handy intro.

GeoServer OSGeo Feedback

Last week I had a chance to pass on a bit of writing about the OGC and communicating with developers.

This week the selection is  a bit more on topic:

• Feedback on GeoServer Incubation Process (BLOG): I am super pleased to recommend GeoServer for OSGeo graduation. I have a blog post thanking the usual suspects (and a few unusual ones) along with some feedback on the incubation process.

And file these as interesting distractions:

• GeoNext in Pictures (Google+ Album): I had a great time and will write up a few of the discussions real soon now. Meanwhile have look at what was a great event! Updated: the official conference gallery is now up.
• ColorBrewer: Thanks to Anita Graser for pointing out a version of colour brewer that does not require flash!

OGC and lowering the bar of implementation

I have a couple blog posts up on the LISAsoft website of an OGC nature:

• OWS 9 and WMS 1.3.0 Adoption: OWS9 is now complete (with an impressive $2.65 million from sponsors answered with $5 million in-kind from industry). For my part I was able to look at Daniel Morissette's excellent advise not to upgrade to WMS 1.3.0 and start attacking the source of the problem - restoring trust in WMS clients.
• OGC Struggling to Reach out to Implementors: Last week saw a great example of tough love for the GeoPackage standard. Carl Reed is doing the right thing and taking work like OWS Context to the standards@osgeo.org list for review. I had a look and while I am impressed with the level of "reuse" shown, I am concerned with the amount of work (and risk of mistakes) being fostered on client authors.

The common theme here is that OGC takes care of services pretty darn well (this makes sense as it is often what sponsors of events such as OWS9 are willing to pay for). In reaching for a larger audience of client applications the standards body really needs to step up its game and work hard on communication, simplification and lowering the bar of implementation.

I am heading to the AusNZ OGC meeting this week to discuss OWS10 - it will be interesting to see where the priorities are.

LocationTech Announcement

LocationTech has officially gone live, after a good year of planning and ramp-up. Congratulations to all involved. I have a small write up on the LISAsoft website (with links to news articles as I find them).

GeoRabble Putting the eXtreme into Xmas

Putting Dec 4th on the map - GeoRabble Brisbane is kicking off a country wide celebration of mapping on the wild side.

No seriously, the first speaker is about koalatracker.com.au. Alex Harris was the toast of the recent Spatial@Gov conference (according to twitter #spatialAtgov) and this is an excellent opportunity see what a successful crowd source mapping project can accomplish.

For more information (and an update on speakers) check the web page or just go ahead and reserve a ticket.

Brisbane is the first of several cities to break out some mapping action this week. If you are not in Queensland, consider catching the action in Perth or Sydney.

Photos from GeoRabble Brisbane 1

GeoRabble Brisbane 1 was the highlight of the social calendar for any self respecting Cartographer. Check out the following photos, and we hope to see you on Tuesday for a little Christmas cheer.

From GeoRabble Brisbane 1

The best thing I will write this week

I am having a great time being productive, with great progress on uDig, GeoServer and a local FOSS4G-AU un-conference.

However I missed something! The Incubation Committee has been very good about running bi-monthly meeting to collect status updates, discuss current applications, and double check projects that are ready to graduate.

And I neglected to call a meeting this month! Sad..

With that in mind, I have invited project mentors to send a status update email. Covering what progress a project is making, what are the next tasks they are looking at and if there is anything that can be done to help. Backed up by the following example:

Subject: Christmas Cheer Status Update

The Christmas Cheer project is proceeding well, the core team of eight reindeer are scheduled to make their Dec 25th release deadline. However there has been no progress on incubation tasks this quarter.

Actually we do have one small bit of progress to report Santa has kindly offered to act as project officer.

The development team has been wrestling with how to open source a key bit of scheduling software that contains a privacy sensitive white list (of who is naughty and nice). It looks like a technical solution is feasible, with information being contained on a server and an example configuration provided by the free software foundation used as a reference point for test cases.

The next task is hunting down release guidelines for the incubation checklist. The current build instructions are quite dated consisting primarily of poetry, and the team is evaluating alternatives (including Rake).

No further incubation progress is expected in December as the team is fully occupied with their current release. Progress on the data / code / documentation review has been inconsistent as the elves have gotten into the eggnog. We expect work to resume early February.

Although I am taking part of the developer list, there has been few actual questions.

Happy Holidays!

(Okay not the best writing you will read this week, only the best I am going to write)