27 November 2007
https://grass.osgeo.org

The development team is happy to announce that a new bugfix version of GRASS GIS has been released today. This release fixes a number of bugs discovered in the 6.2.2 source code. It is primarily for stability purposes and adds minimal new features. Besides bug fixes it also includes a number of new message translations and updates for the help pages and projection database.

Highlights include further maturation of the GRASS 6 GUI, vector, and database code. Some improvements have been backported from the GRASS 6.3 development branch where new development continues at a strong pace of approximately one code commit every hour, including major work on an all new cross-platform wxPython GUI and a native MS Windows port (from 6.3.0 onwards).

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is a Geographic Information System (GIS) combining powerful raster, vector, remote sensing and and geospatial processing engines into a single integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated 4D presentation graphics and hardcopy maps.

GRASS is currently used around the world in academic and commercial settings as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies. It runs on a variety of popular hardware platforms and is Free open-source software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

GRASS is a proposed founding project of the new Open Source Geospatial Foundation. In support of the movement towards consolidation in the open source geospatial software world, GRASS is tightly integrated with the latest GDAL/OGR libraries. This enables access to an extensive range of raster and vector formats, including OGC-conformal Simple Features. GRASS also makes use of the highly regarded PROJ.4 software library with support for most known map projections and the easy definition of new and rare map projections via custom parameterization. Strong links are maintained with the QuantumGIS and R Statistics projects with integrated GRASS toolkits available for both.

Software download at https://grass.osgeo.org/download/ and numerous
mirror sites.

Full story at https://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass623.html

The new edition of Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach is now available! With this third edition, we enter the new era of GRASS 6, the first release that includes substantial new code developed by the International GRASS Development Team. The dramatic growth in open source software libraries has made GRASS 6 development more efficient, and has enhanced GRASS interoperability with a wide range of open source and proprietary geospatial tools. The book is based on GRASS 6.3.

Thoroughly updated with material related to GRASS6, the third edition includes new sections on attribute database management and SQL support, vector networks analysis, lidar data processing and new graphical user interfaces. All chapters are updated with numerous practical examples using the first release of a comprehensive, state-of-the-art geospatial data set. This new OSGeo Educational data set along with additional material can be downloaded from https://www.grassbook.org/

A second release candidate of GRASS 6.3.0 is now available:

https://grass.itc.it/grass63/source/grass-6.3.0RC2.tar.gz

An initial announcement has been drafted at
https://grass.itc.it/announces/announce_grass630.html
(state April 2007, further fixes need to be merged in from
https://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_6.3_Feature_Plan
RC1 and RC2)

Key fixes include improved portability for MS-Windows (native support), hundreds of fixes, TclTk based portable graphical interface and much new functionality.

Release candidate management at
https://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_6.3_Feature_Plan

Please test, test, test…

Thanks to all contributors!

Markus