[R-sig-Geo] rgdal 1.5-8 released on CRAN

[Roger Bivand]

With sp 1.4-2 and rgdal 1.5-8, those using GDAL 3 and PROJ 6 (including 
users of the CRAN Windows binary when it comes) will be part of the big 
migration to WKT2 from Proj4 strings for CRS representation. See

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rgdal/vignettes/CRS_projections_transformations.html

or for a better rendering of "\phi" and bib-handling:

https://rgdal.r-forge.r-project.org/articles/CRS_projections_transformations.html

for background and https://www.r-spatial.org/r/2020/03/17/wkt.html for the 
full sf and sp story.

You will see lots of warnings, they should grab your attention, that is 
what they are for. We need your attention to be as sure as we can be that 
your results - if affected by the transition - have been checked by you.

I plan to flip the warnings to default off from rgdal 1.6-*, and sp 1.5-*. 
In some weeks but before flipping the defaults, I'll follow up showing 
ways of muting them, but we really need to be confident that this 
necessary and future-proofing change isn't silently destroying your work 
first. So please don't treat the many warnings as just pesky and nagging - 
they are priming your immune system to check for unwanted consequences of 
your legacy CRS representation choices.

I'd also like to thank the maintainers of packages importing 
from/depending on sp/rgdal for largely positive responses to issues raised 
and emails sent, often less polite than they might have been, but grabbing 
attention was more important. From over 70 broken reverse dependency 
packages we are now well under 20, and I've contacted all of those, with 
only a couple not responding. Edzer has seen similar responsiveness for 
the parallel migration of sf.

Enjoy!

Roger

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en