GeoServer Improvement Proposals

This page lists the currently active GeoServer Improvement Proposals (GSIPs).

Proposals Under Discussion

The following proposals are currently being set up and/or voted on.

• GSIP 24 - TIME-ELEVATION-BAND parameters parsing for WMS 1.1.1 WCS 1.X — The goal of this work is the introduction of initial capabilities to coherently parse TIME - ELEVATION - BAND parameters for WMS  1.1.1 and WCS 1.x modules.
• GSIP 36 - Resource - Publishing Split and Virtual Configuration — A quick summary of the proposal. Use a single sentence to sum up the proposal. Save the "why" for the Motivation section.
• GSIP 37 - GPL plus Classpath Exception for Dispatch — Move the GeoServer dispatch system to GPL+Classpath Exception.
• GSIP 40 - Review Process — Formalizing the GeoServer review processed.
• GSIP 43 - Roadmap and release handling process — A proposal for long and short term roadmap process and its relationship with releases and testing. Builds son top of the [GSIP 30 - Roadmap Process] experience and tries to improve over it.
• GSIP 45 - Moving GeoServer model in a standalone module — Moving the Geoserver catalog *Info beans into a standalone module.

Active Proposals

These proposals have been accepted, and now include a JIRA number to track their progress

• GSIP 15 - Contributor Agreements and Supporting Documentation — Creating Contributor Agreements and supporting documentation
• GSIP 38 - Join Open Source Geospatial Foundation — Join the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.
• GSIP 39 - Centralized, pluggable URL mangling — Provide a centralized API to build URLs allowing pluggable transformations to change them (e.g., proxy handling and the like).

Completed Proposals

These proposals have been completed, and have been made available in a public release.

• GSIP 1 - Project Steering Committee formation — The bootstrapping of the Project Steering Committee, to give it power in a formal motion
• GSIP 2 - Automated Code Formatting — Adding automated code formatting to the maven build so that code formatting is always done.
• GSIP 5 - Release process
• GSIP 6 - Track GeoTools Trunk — Move GeoServer trunk to geotools trunk
• GSIP 7 - OWS Dispatching System — Creating a dispatch system that can dynamically dispatch to an open web service.
• GSIP 8 - New Configuration System — Adding a new configuration subsystem that is easier to maintain and more effective then the one currently in place.
• GSIP 10 - WFS 1.1 Support — Porting wfs 1.1 implementation from ows4 branch to GeoServer trunk.
• GSIP 11 - Data configuration handling — Allowing developers to easily change data directory configurations without forcing people to download them.
• GSIP 13 - Logging — Improving GeoServer logging.
• GSIP 14 - WFS Transaction handling framework
• GSIP 16 - Security subsystem
• GSIP 19 - Per layer security — Allowing per layer security to complete the security offering started with service layer security
• GSIP 20 - Automated Regionating in KML MapProducer — Merge the code that does automated "regionating" (a Google-coined term for choosing to hide or show features based on zoom level)  in the GeoSearch community module back into the main KML map producer.
• GSIP 22 - Community Modules — A process for managing GeoServer extensions.
• GSIP 23 - Wicket UI — A new web administration tool based on the Apache Wicket framework.
• GSIP 25 - New Documentation Framework — Formalizing GeoServer documentation process and tools
• GSIP 26 - New GeoServer Branding — Proposal for new branding - primarily logo, font and color scheme
• GSIP 27 - Long freeze handling procedures — For every major release we have a long running freeze period that prevents every activity on the stable branch for a long period, making it harder development on the same branch. This needs to be addressed to allow small features and non critical bug fixes to be attended without un-nedeeded delays
• GSIP 28 - Subversion Reorganization — Reorganizing the top level structure of branches in the svn repository.
• GSIP 31 - Use DataAccess API — [GEOS-2568] Update codebase to use DataAccess API, which the previous assumption that all features are a very limited subset of GML Simple Features Profile 0 (the simplest available official GML profile).
• GSIP 29- GeoSearch Index Exposure in GeoServer — Augment GeoServer's exposure in Google's GeoSearch by providing a nice summary page for layers.
• GSIP 32 - REST support module — The creation of a new core module which contains support classes for creating RESTful services in GeoServer.
• GSIP 33 - REST configuration module — REST configuration interface for GeoServer.
• GSIP 34 - New data directory structure for 2.x — A restructuring of the geoserver data directory for the 2.x series.
• GSIP 35 - WMS Decorations — WMS decorations provide a framework for visually annotating images from WMS with absolute (rather than spatial) positioning.  Examples of decorations include compasses, scalebars, and watermarks.
• GSIP 39 - Promote app-schema to extension — Promote the app-schema community module to an extension.
• GSIP 41 - Promote perLayerSecurity UI to extension — Promote the web-security community module to an extension.
• GSIP 42 - Official testing team — Extend participation of the user base in the GeoServer evolution by setting up an official testing team.
• GSIP 44 - Virtual services with workspaces — Providing the ability to provide multiple virtual W*S services by extending the existing namespace/workspace filtering concept.

Deferred and Rejected Proposals

The following proposals have not been accepted, either deffered to a later time based on planning, or rejected based on concerns mentioned during the submission process.

• GSIP 3 - Issues List Module
• GSIP 4 - Status Interface
• GSIP 9 - New Catalog — Replacing the existing GeoServer catalog with one which can provide more functionality and better scale.
• GSIP 12 - Mock Test Support — Provide base classes which make it trivial to develop unit tests based on a "mock" GeoServer setup.
• GSIP 17 - Community module handling
• GSIP 18 - Output Format Cleanup — A cleanup of the Output Format apis in GeoServer.
• GSIP 21 - KML Vector Transformer Refactoring — Clean up KMLVectorTransformer before it becomes more unmanageable than it already is.

GSIP 30 - Roadmap Process

A proposal of a development process centered around a community managed road map.