Sprint Day #1

Ready, set, go!

The first day of the Toronto Code Sprint 2009 was today, as 20 hackers from the geospatial “C Tribe” gathered in a smallish room at the Radisson hotel on the Toronto waterfront.

The weather was warm and clear yesterday, but cold and wet today, not that we noticed until the evening.

I spent my day huddled with the Largest Group of PostGIS Developers Ever Assembled. Myself, Regina Obe, Mark Cave-Ayland, Leo Hsu, Olivier Courtin and Pierre Racine. Day one was mostly talking, about our goals for PostGIS 1.4 (get it out the door, close the bugs and release a candidate) and PostGIS 2.0 (room for more types, strict support of ISO SQL/MM outputs, geodetic support, 3D objects, geometry typemods, and wktraster). We got a lot decided in a short period, and are ready to buckle down for some coding tomorrow in aid of getting 1.4 out the door.

Because I was huddled with PostGIS people, I didn’t get to participate in the Mapserver planning session. But over dinner I was told that XML map-file directions were discussed and decided on (a standard schema will be developed and XSLT transform from map->xml), performance issues were targeted (proj!), and a plan for one-pass querying (to speed up WFS mode) was settled on.

This evening, we watched the Hershey Bears best the Toronto Marlies of the AHL, featuring some fine offense (on the part of the Bears) and the requisite number of fights. Then we battled the weather (that cold, cold rain) back to dinner at East Sid Joe’s downtown. Thanks to our sponsors, qPublic.net and Rich Greenwood for supporting today’s activities.