new rgrass for the upcoming grass version 8?

[veroandreo]

GRASS 8 will be released (hopefully) soon, there's already a preview branch here: https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/tree/previewbranch_8_0

What would be needed to make rgrass work with grass 8? Is it only about changing the version number supported? There were not changes in raster or vector formats.

[rsbivand]

Hi @veroandreo,
Yes, good question. I started switching from sp representations to sf for vector, but for raster, sp works with raster. So a discussion on raster representations on the R side (stars or terra or both?) is needed. These questions apply irrespective of GRASS 8, but it may make sense to let rgrass7 stay largely as it is, create a new package, copy across the XML-based execGRASS() components needed for scripting as well as initGRASS(), and re-implement the loose-coupled vector/raster transfer parts for sf for vector and ?? for raster, leaving sp and rgdal out.

Beyond that, it would be very sensible to replace me as maintainer before more changes, as I am retired now. Edzer and I expect to "retire" rgdal and rgeos by 2024, and re-route all sp operations through sf for vector (but raster isn't clear). I also expect maptools to be defunct on about the same time scale (uses for the SG= argument to initGRASS()).

[laurapoggio-sptools]

I came to this page as I was checking the rgrass7 support for terra instead of raster. Reading the questions above, I think support for both terra and stars would be great, as terra syntax and approach is much more similar to raster.

My 2c and thanks for all the work in these packages!

[veroandreo]

Hi @rsbivand, all

Thanks for your answer and your tremendous work throughout years :) Apologies for my late response here.

So, a new package rgrass8 would be so far the quickest thing to do to keep the GRASS-R connection once GRASS 8 is out (we are bit delayed with that, but we are much closer) and we have until the end of 2023 to re-implement anything using sp, maptools or rgdal (should be done earlier than that ideally).

Volunteers?? :)

[VLucet]

Hi and thanks to @veroandreo for pointing me to this discussion (my apologies again that your email ended up in my spam folder..). I would love to be involved.