Changes of Note

• filter.ferry now creates output dimensions with the same type as the input dimension. It also takes an arrow '=>' in addition to '=' in the --dimension specification.
• filters.hexbin now falls back to slow boundary creation if no bounds information exists to do fast boundary creation.
• Dimension names can now contain the forward slash ('/') character.
• readers.gdal and filters.colorization now attempt to create dimensions with the type of the associated raster.
• The Python PDAL extension code was removed from the PDAL source tree to its own repository.
• The JAVA PDAL interface was remove from the PDAL source tree to its own repository.
• pdal pipelineand pdal translate now use stream mode if the operation being performed is streamable. An option --nostream has been added to both commands to prevent the use of stream mode. The --stream option of pdal pipeline is now obsolete and ignored.
• A new interface has been provided for the creation of plugins requiring less boilerplate code. There has been no API change.
• Stages and pipelines can now be tested to check whether they are streamable.

Enhancements

• Added options --timegap and --speedmin to readers.mbio to allow configuration of which points should be read.
• Added support for compression schemes (xz, lzma, zstd) and created a standardized interface (#1722).
• writers.bpf now supports the option auto for the coord_id option to allow the UTM zone to be set from the spatial reference if possible (#1723).
• Added the ability read stage-specific options from a file with the --option_file option (#1641).
• Replace the GDAL point-in-polygon with a much faster implementation in filters.crop.
• Add a --reverse option to filters.mortonorder to provide a point ordering for good dispersal.
• readers.bpf now supports the TCR (ECEF - earth centered, earth fixed) coordinate system.
• Added option --use_eb_vlr to allow readers.las to interpret an extra bytes VLR as if the file were version 1.4 even if it's using an earlier LAS version.
• readers.text added options --header and --skip to provide an alternative header line and to allow skipping lines before reading the header, respectively.
• writers.text now supports the ability to specify individual dimension precision using a colon (':') and integer following the dimension name in the --order option.
• readers.numpy adds support for reading from Numpy (.npy) save files.
• pdal info now provides the --enumerate option. See the documentation for filters.stats for details.
• Added a general option --logtiming to cause log output to contain the elapsed time from the start of the program. (#1882)

Documentation

• Added a description of the Alpine Linux environment used for Travis and Docker.
• Updated the documentation for building PDAL on Windows.
• Added an example of how to loop files with PowerShell.
• Corrected output shown in the documentation for filters.hexbin.
• Reorganized the stages landing page to make it easier to find. (#1880)

New stages

• readers.greyhound - Allows reading points from a source using the greyhound protocol.
• filters.neighborclassifier - Re-classifies points based on the classification of neighboring points.

Removed stages

• filters.computerange - Use filters.python to simulate the functionality.

Bug fixes

• filters.range now always rejects NaN values as out of range.
• Changed the default --timegap value in readers.mbio from 0 to 1 second.
• Fixed a bug when reading pointers from metadata on some OSX systems.
• Fixed a problem in pdal translate where overriding a reader or writer from a pipeline wouldn't create the proper pipeline.
• Fixed a problem where multiple LASzip VLRs would get written to LAS files (#1726).
• Fixed an installation problem with the Python extension.
• Fixed a bug in writers.tindex that could cause a crash if the output file wasn't LAS.
• Fixed JSON output from filters.hexbin when density/area can't be calculated.
• Fixed a problem where output might be tagged with the wrong SRS when using filters.reprojection in stream mode. (#1877)
• PDAL_DRIVER_PATH would be improperly parsed on Windows systems when the path contained colons. Windows builds now use the semicolon as the path separator. (#1889)
• Convert NaN and infinite double values to proper strings for output as JSON.
• Synthetic, keypoint and withheld flags are now added to the classification dimension for version 1.0 - 1.3 files in readers.las.
• Support missed case supporting points with color but no density in filters.poisson.
• Throw an error if the input file can't be opened in readers.ply.
• The --stdin option for kernels.tindex didn't work. Now it does. Various other fixes were made.
• writers.gdal now throws an error if an attempt is made to write an output file with no points available.
• A build error that would be generated if lazsip was not found, even if it was not requested, has been resolved.
• A build error that would be generated if Python was found but not requested has been resolved.
• PDAL defaults to using normal CMake interface linking (#1890)
• Fixed an issue where dimensions from readers.pcd and writers.pcd could get confused with dimensions from readers.sbet and writers.sbet.
• Fixed index computation in filters.voxelcentroidnearestneighbor and filters.voxelcenternearestneighbor #1901
• Fixed libdl linking #1900