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\section{Quantum GIS Project Update}
\label{sec:qgis}
\emph{Gary Sherman}


\subsection{Current and Upcoming Release}
The QGIS development team released version 0.8.0 on December 29th 2006 after a
long development period. Much of the time was spent in porting the code base
from Qt 3.3 to Qt 4.2.x. With that effort complete, the project is staged to
release new versions in a more timely fashion.  Version 0.8.1 is scheduled to
be released by the end of the first quarter of 2007. While primarily a bug
fix release, there are will be a few minor enhancements, including an expanded
set of tools in the GRASS toolbox.

\subsection{Change in the Build System} 
The QGIS project has migrated to using CMake rather than the GNU autotools.
This will become official with the 0.9 release, but the changes have been
backported to the 0.8.1 branch as well.  CMake has proven to be easy to use,
flexible, and actually results in faster compilation times of the QGIS code
base.

\subsection{What's Ahead in Version 0.9}
At version 0.9, Python bindings are included for most classes in the QGIS API.
This means you can write both plugins and standalone programs using Python and
PyQt. A number of folks are already developing plugins and the famous ``Tim
Sutton C++ tutorials'' have been ported to Python as well by Martin Dobias.
Check out the QGIS blog \footnote{qgis blog: \url{http://blog.qgis.org} } for the tutorials and
more information. 

There are a number of substantial changes in 0.9, including
a refactoring effort to support the use of the QGIS libraries in
your custom programming projects. The development team is still working on the
details of the 0.9 release. Keep an eye out for more details on the website as the
work proceeds.

If you are adventurous, you can try out the new features and the Python
bindings by checking out the development (that means unstable) code using svn \footnote{qgis svn: \url{ https://svn.qgis.org/repos/qgis/trunk/qgis}}
\subsection{QGIS Enters OSGeo}
QGIS applied for and was accepted into incubation as an OSGeo project in late
February. A poll of the community indicated that most people were in favor of
membership. We now start the process of working with the OSGeo mentor to become a full fledged OSGeo project.
