The GeoServer team is happy to announce the release of  GeoServer 2.2-RC2, now available for download here. We would like to encourage you to download and try out some of our new features and let us know if there are any bugs to be fixed.

This release includes plenty of bug fixes and new improvements such as:

• Have rest endpoint display a note when no rest extensions are installed

• Rearrange GWC UI components for higher consistency

• Support EPSG:102113 as an alias for web mercator

• Write GWC specific HTTP response headers when using direct WMS integration

• Control the meta tile output format cache so that external apps can drop it on demand

• Made it possible to configure embedded gwc tile layers through the REST API

• Made GWC “direct WMS integration” work with virtual services

For more information, please refer to the changelog for this release.

A big thank you to all the users, contributors, and sponsors that have helped to make this release possible by providing feedback and support to the GeoServer community.

The GeoServer team is happy to announce the release of  GeoServer 2.2-RC1, now available for download. We would like to encourage you to download and try out some of our new features and let us know if there are any bugs to be fixed.

This release includes plenty of bug fixes and new improvements such as:

• Allow security provider plugins to hook into initialization process

• REST security configuration improvement

• Allow KML Document Title to be set by format_options parameters

• Increased performance when saving a layer whose native SRS has no native EPSG code

• Added functionality for setting return page to GeoServerBasePage

For more information, please refer to the changelog for this release.

The GeoServer team have also migrated from the SVN repository to GitHub and would like to give a special thanks to Justin Deoliveira from OpenGeo for all his hard work into making the migration possible.

A big thank you to all the users, contributors, and sponsors that have helped to make this release possible by providing feedback and support to the GeoServer community.

GeoServer and GeoTools have moved to Git and GitHub for version control and source hosting.  We hope that this change will make work easier for existing GeoServer developers and encourage contributions from new ones.

Git is a relatively new version management software.  Compared with the Subversion software that GeoServer previously used, it offers several features including offline commits and history browsing, cryptographic checksums for commits, and several advanced options for automatic merging.  In addition, Git’s distributed nature means that any potential contributor can “fork” the GeoServer code and make changes instead of waiting on a GeoServer committer to grant access.  (Such changes must still be approved by the GeoServer development team in order to be included in an official GeoServer release.)

Along with the shift to Git, we are moving GeoServer’s source hosting to GitHub.  GitHub provides free hosting for open-source projects, including nice tracking of forks, a syntax-highlighting source browser, and interesting reports on who is contributing to the project. GeoServer’s documentation, bug tracking, mailing lists, and IRC chat, however, are unaffected by the move.

The GeoServer developer manual has been updated with instructions on working with Git.  If you are a Git guru with some tips to add to the guide, a savvy user with addenda for the manual, or a Java hacker with bugs to fix, please fork us on GitHub!

A lot of great GeoServer-related content is published every month by individuals and organizations working on the project. Below you’ll find some highlights from the previous month:

• Dynamic WMS styling with GeoServer: SLD and library mode (GeoSolutions)

• GeoServer Stunning image quality + max compression rate = New PNG8 quantizer is served! (GeoSolutions)

• Accurate datum shift and full transformation control in GeoServer (GeoSolutions)

• GeoServer to the rescue with cascading services (GeoServer)

• Creating a GeoServer Split Polygon WPS Process (Part I) (OpenGeo)

If you have anything else to add, comment on this post and we’ll make sure to check out your blog for next month.

The GeoServer Users mailing list is often replete with stories about how folks are using GeoServer to solve problems and be successful. For more casual watchers of GeoServer who are not on this list, you may not get to hear about these success stories. So, to switch things up on this blog, we thought we’d report on success story from longtime GeoServer community member Roger Bedell. Here, he talks about using GeoServer as a replacement for MSRMAPS.

Another awe-inspiring moment provided by GeoServer. Recently, MSRMAPS (Microsoft Research Maps, originally known as **TerraServer**), a WMS server for digital raster graphics (DRGs) and digital orthophoto quarter quadrangles (DOQQs) was shut down. Nobody really cared about the DOQQs, but this was just about the only DRG WMS server out there. Looking around, I found that the [USGS](http://usgs.gov) has a DRG server: > >

[ http://raster.nationalmap.gov/ArcGIS/services/DRG/TNM_Digital_Raster_Graphics/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS]( http://raster.nationalmap.gov/ArcGIS/services/DRG/TNM_Digital_Raster_Graphics/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS)

> > However it is split into UTM zones and different resolutions. I just wanted 4326 for the entire US, like Terraserver provided. So, I created a GeoServer [Amazon EC2 Micro](http://aws.amazon.com/free/) instance (which is free for a year) using the basic Amazon Linux AMI (AMI ID: ami-e565ba8c), and installed just [Tomcat](http://tomcat.apache.org) and and [GeoServer 2.2 beta 2](http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/GeoServer+2.2-beta2): ` sudo yum update sudo yum install httpd httpd-devel tomcat7 wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer/2.2-beta2/geoserver-2.2-beta2-war.zip/download unzip geoserver-2.2-beta2-war.zip sudo chown tomcat:tomcat geoserver.war sudo mv geoserver.war /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/ sudo /sbin/service httpd start sudo /sbin/service tomcat7 start ` I then added a [cascaded WMS store](http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/data/cascaded/wms.html) and used the GetCapabilities URL above. This automatically added and published all of the layers. Then I put together a [layer group](http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/webadmin/data/layergroups.html) with all the layers. The only change I made was to check the "Default Style" box, otherwise I would get a WMS error. I set the coordinate system for the layer group to EPSG:4326, and it worked. Thank you GeoServer team!

For those who are interested in using this composite layer, here is the capabilities document to a hosted GeoServer:

[http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities](http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities)

The layer in question is called DRGComposite. And if you’d like you see a preview of this layer without creating a new store in your GeoServer:

[http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms/reflect?layers=DRGComposite&format=openlayers](http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms/reflect?layers=DRGComposite&format=openlayers)

Thank you, Roger, for sharing your story!

If you have other GeoServer success stories and would like to share them here, please comment on this post and let the rest of us know!