Stack Overflow & OSGeo¶
| date: | 2010-05-19 21:46 |
|---|---|
| author: | admin |
| category: | general, programming |
| tags: | opensource, osgeo, stackoverflow |
| slug: | stack-overflow-osgeo |
| status: | published |
Stack Overflow, as most developers will
already know, is a question and answer site for programmers. It’s
perfect for mainstream development questions in any programming
language, and has also become the support site of choice for some newer
programming communities such as Android
developers.
It can also be used as a barometer to see which current open source GIS projects have gained traction in the mainstream programming world. I took the full list of OSGeo projects from http://www.osgeo.org/ and ran queries on the site to see how many questions there were for each project. The results are as follows (as of May 2010):
| Project | Type | No. of Questions | Link to Questions |
| deegree | web mapping | 0 results | |
| geomajas | web mapping | 1 result | geomajas |
| GeoServer _ | web mapping | 13 results | geoserver |
| Mapbender | web mapping | 0 results | |
| MapBuilder | web mapping | 0 results | |
| MapFish | web mapping | 1 result | mapfish |
| MapGuide | web mapping | 1 result | mapguide |
| MapServer | web mapping | 17 results | mapserver & `umn-mapserver <ht tp://stackoverflow .com/questions/tag ged/umn-mapserver> `__ |
| OpenLayers | web mapping | 56 results | openlayers |
| GRASS GIS | desktop | 0 results | |
| OSSIM <http://www .osgeo.org/ossim> __ | desktop | 0 results | |
| Quantum GIS | desktop | 0 results | |
| gvSIG <http://www .osgeo.org/gvsig> __ | desktop | 0 results | |
| FDO | library | 0 results | |
| GDAL/OGR | library | 14 results | `gdal <http://stac koverflow.com/ques tions/tagged/gdal> `__ |
| GEOS | library | 2 results | `geos <http://stac koverflow.com/ques tions/tagged/geos> `__ |
| GeoTools | library | 7 results | geotools |
| `MetaCRS <http://m etacrs.osgeo.org/> `__ | library | 0 results | |
| PostGIS _ | library | 54 results | postgis |
| GeoNetwork | metadata catalog | 0 results |
A couple of disclaimers ?” I added the MapFish tag, and tagged a few of the GeoTools questions myself.
Its clear that OpenLayers and PostGIS are way out in front in terms of questions asked, and it may not be too much of a leap to suggest these projects are the most widely used GIS projects outside of the GIS world.
- A JavaScript error ironically thrown by OpenLayers
Neither of these projects however match the huge numbers of questions about neogeographer’s tools of choice ?” Google Maps at 1,369 questions. Poor old Bing Maps (perhaps partly due to being renamed from Live Maps) only gets 71 questions.
Stack Overflow makes use of tags and a REST API so the full collection of questions related to OSGeo projects can be seen using the `following URL <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/geomajas%20or%20geoserver%20or%20mapfish%20or%20mapguide%20or%20mapserver%20or%20openlayers%20or%20gdal%20or%20geos%20or%20geotools%20or%20postgis%20or%20osgeo>`__.
While it looks very unlikely that Stack Overflow will ever replace the OSGeo mailing lists as the first choice for debate and support, it would be good if a few of the FAQ got asked on Stack Overflow to help new users of these projects who aren’t aware of the mailing lists, or the Nabble interface to search them. It would also spread knowledge that these projects exist to mainstream developers and could help some projects gain traction.
You can also upvote (or downvote) my answers too, as there are so few GIS developers using the site that no one can assess the whether my answers are valid or nonsense..
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