GRASS 5.0 Information and Features
General Information -
GRASS 5 Manuals -
Bug reports | ToDo -
Developers forum -
GRASScluster -
Credits -
Download -
CVS repository
General information
There are now 3 GRASS branches:
- 5.0 (CVS repository "grass", branch "releasebranch_26_april_2002_5_0_0").
- 5.3 (CVS repository "grass", HEAD).
- 5.7 (CVS repository "grass51", HEAD).
5.0 is the stable branch, from which the various 5.0.x releases are
derived. Future releases from this branch should contain only
bug-fixes or minor, backward-compatible improvements. 5.0.3
was released 6 November 2003.
5.3 is the development version of 5.0. It will include anything which
is added to the 5.0 branch (although such changes will typically go
into 5.3 initially, then get merged into the 5.0 branch later), plus
some other changes which are too intrusive to go into the 5.0.x
releases (e.g. because they break backwards compatibility, or
introduce additional dependencies). See related web pages.
5.7 is the experimental version which was previously referred to as
"5.1". See related web pages.
For features details, please refer to the Roadmap.
Current stable version:
GRASS 5.0.3 (released 6 November 2003), GRASS 5.0.3 is a bugfix release only.
Press Release 5.0.0 September
2002: First Stable Release - GRASS 5 Free Geographic Information System
What's new in current release of GRASS 5.0.x?
Read on the detailed NEWS list.
For details please read the detailed changes HISTORY.
What's new in GRASS 5.0.x compared to 4.x?
GRASS 5.0.x represents the first major change in GRASS functionality in
several years, with the most notable change being support for floating
point and null values. GRASS also now has an improved graphical user
interface based on Tcl/Tk. Additionally a new multiple attributes/multiple
dimensions sites format is implemented, a new three dimensional
raster format grid3 (voxel format, only in
experimental tree) and first library functions for the GRASS DateTime
Library. Additionally 122
projections are supported! Two new visualization interfaces in the form
of Tcl/Tk GRASS and Nviz. NVIZ allows users to realistically render
multiple surfaces in 3D space, drape GRASS vector files over surfaces, and
display sites files either on surfaces or as 3D points. Tcl/Tk GRASS
provides a platform-independant windowing system for GRASS.
Caution - GRASS 5.0 creates different
map layer data formats. GRASS 4.X mapsets are upward compatible with GRASS
5.0, but mapsets created with GRASS 5.0 are NOT downward compatible with
4.x !!!! If you should use a database created with GRASS 4.x (please use a
copy), run r.support on all raster maps and v.support on all vector maps to
update them to GRASS 5 structure.
See also press release on GRASS raster compression changes.
How stable is GRASS 5.0.x?
GRASS 5.0.x has been tested on Linux, MacOSX, SUN, WindowsNT/2000/XP and Silicon
Graphics Irix systems. Many people use it for daily production. HOWEVER,
there are likely still some bugs
to be worked
out.
GRASS 5.0 documents
Bug reports
- You are kindly requested to send your comments about GRASS 5 functionality
(recent version).
- List of known bugs
in this GRASS 5.0.x version. Your help to fix these bugs is highly appreciated. If you find
a bug, please check the list if it is already known. If not, you are kindly
requested to report the bug(s) to use our new bug report system
Clustered GRASS GIS
GIS related work is regularly CPU-intensive - as CPU power becomes cheaper
nowadays, GRASS might be run in clustered environments. There are several
options to parallelize GRASS:
- openMOSIX: To run GRASS
on an openMOSIX cluster,
there is no need to modify GRASS or to link with any library, or even
to assign processes to different nodes. You can run GRASS in parallel
sessions (same location, different mapsets) which will be sent to the
various cluster nodes.
However, individual modules will be run serially on one CPU. So this is more
load-balancing than a real cluster. It should be quite easy to set up.
- Beowulf Cluster: Requires GRASS
modifications not done yet.
- GRASS 5 contains the "gmath" library which contains wrapper functions to
the numerical libraries LAPACK/BLAS which also exists in a
parallelized form PLAPACK and PBLAS and ScaLAPACK. However, further
work has to be done to utilize the LAPACK/BLAS functions within GRASS.
- Parallelized s.surf.idw (MPI)
Credits
GRASS Credits page (incomplete) - List of
GRASS
Development Team members
Download
Ok, ok. How can I get current GRASS 5.0.x release?
Go to the download page and start downloading!
Some additional tidbits you may need...
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