OTB 8.0.0 Alpha 1

Community & Steering Committee
1

Dear OTB community,

We are happy to announce that OTB version 8.0.0 Alpha 1 is available.

Ready to use binary packages are available on the package page of the website:

OTB-8.0.0-alpha1-Win32.zip for Windows 32 bits
OTB-8.0.0-alpha1-Win64.zip for Windows 64 bits
OTB-8.0.0-alpha1-Linux64.run for Linux
OTB-8.0.0-alpha1-Darwin64.run for Mac OS X

You can also checkout the release branch with git:

git clone https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/orfeotoolbox/otb.git OTB -b release-8.0

The documentation for OTB 8.0.0 can be found here

The main goal of release 8.0 is to remove OSSIM from OTB dependencies. This implies the refactoring of a lot of classes and functions, many of which are in the core modules of the library. The plan of this refactoring is detailed in this issue.
Before the actual release and release candidates, it is planned to release two alpha versions:

  • OTB 8.0.0-alpha1 : Optical processing without Ossim, OTB still depends on Ossim, but only use the library in SAR processing
  • OTB 8.0.0-alpha2 : SAR processing withou ossim, OTB does not depend on Ossim.

As many users do not use the SAR functionalities of OTB, this first alpha gives you the opportunity to test the refactored functionalities before the actual release process. This includes:

  • The Metadata framework
  • The DEM Handler
  • The radiometry framework (optical calibration and filters)
  • The RPC framework

Given the scale of the refactoring, particular attention should be given to the validation of these changes.
We welcome your feedbacks and requests on GitLab and if you find a bug, please report it.

The OTB team.

3 Likes
2

Hi Julien, sorry if I didn’t follow this close enough, but could you briefly explain why OSSIM is removed ?

3

Dear @radouxju,
The main reason behind the removal of OSSIM is having a codebase easier to maintain. Indeed, by removing OSSIM, we free OTB from 4 mandatory dependencies (Ossim, OssimPlugins, GeoTiff, OpenThreads) and 2 modules (OTBOssimAdapters and OTBOpenThreadsAdapters). This dependencies came with an significant price in terms of code maintenance, especially when it comes to generate packages (.deb, conda, etc).
Other reasons are setting up a framework to easily add new sensor models, better metadata architecture and a separation between metadata parsing and geometric modelling.