On May 23, 2020, at 10:50 PM, Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> wrote:
While sf/rgdal/rgeos etc. try to accommodate post-EOL versions of PROJ, GDAL and GEOS, it is not correct to assume that full functionality is available without (close to) current versions of these libraries and their metadata files. In a recent thread, it was sugggested that users can rely on full functionality when using very old versions of external software; this is not correct and has never been offered.
In particular, it is now very important to migrate all users of static builds to GDAL >= 3, PROJ >= 6. Current versions are GDAL 3.1.0 and PROJ 7.0.1. This is because of major breaking changes in coordinate reference system representation, from Proj4 strings to WKT2_2019 strings. See https://www.r-spatial.org/r/2020/03/17/wkt.html and https://rgdal.r-forge.r-project.org/articles/CRS_projections_transformations.html
I know this hurts, but Proj4 strings are unsustainable going forward, and developers of R spatial packages are not willing to keep things running using a defunct representation. We have been pointing this out for at least a year, so affected users and package maintainers should know already.
Roger
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Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en