Bump req. version of GDAL and PROJ for GRASS 8.5?

GRASS GRASS developer
,
1

The upcoming (not immediate) release of GRASS 8.5 may be an opportunity to bump the required minimum version of GDAL to 3.x and PROJ 8+, in order to simplify existing code and future maintenance.

I filed issues for each library:

GDAL:

https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/issues/6629

PROJ:

https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/issues/6628

If you have an opinion on either, please post it there.

Best regards,
Nicklas

2

A PR:

is submitted to set GDAL min. requirement to version 3.7. If you think this is too high set, please tell.

3

GDAL 3.7 or newer is new required on main (and on future 8.5 release) after commit:

4

Update of PROJ requirement is proposed with PR:

The question is, wouldn’t it be better to bump requirement to version 9, and possibly to a point release up till 9.2–9.4? The version 8 was very much a spring board to the new API–it was quickly replaced with 9–and is not the default version on any of the (important) platforms. Such a bump would not currently make any difference in GRASS code, but may in the future… Thoughts anyone?

5

Thank you for the detailed explanation!

I’m still new to GRASS development, so I’m following these discussions to better understand how core dependencies like GDAL and PROJ affect the build and future development.

From a newcomer’s perspective, raising the minimum required versions seems reasonable if it simplifies maintenance and avoids legacy API issues, especially since the newer versions are widely available on most platforms.

I don’t have enough experience yet to comment deeply, but I appreciate the context and the reasoning behind these version bumps. It’s very helpful for understanding the overall development direction.

Thanks again for sharing this!

On Thu, Dec 4, 2025 at 8:53 PM Nicklas Larsson via OSGeo Discourse <noreply@discourse.osgeo.org> wrote:

nila
December 4

Update of PROJ requirement is proposed with PR:

github.com/OSGeo/grass

configure: drop support for PROJ’s old proj_api.h APImain ← nilason:fix_proj_version

opened 09:22AM - 04 Dec 25 UTC
nilason
+127 -1285

This tentatively make the version 9.0 the minimal requirement of PROJ support. (…

The question is, wouldn’t it be better to bump requirement to version 9, and possibly to a point release up till 9.2–9.4? The version 8 was very much a spring board to the new API–it was quickly replaced with 9–and is not the default version on any of the (important) platforms. Such a bump would not currently make any difference in GRASS code, but may in the future… Thoughts anyone?

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