[OSM-talk] gpsbabel and osm (.osm.cc file)

[Roman Neumüller]

Hi folks,

Recently I noticed that gpsbabel still uses version='0.5' string in its  
osm.cc (1).
Latest josm for example complains now when it does not find version='0.6'  
string.
I told gpsbabel about it in their mailing list (2).
Today I got a reply (3):

> We don't really use the OSM API; we just read and write OSM XML files. 
> The doc you cite doesn't appear to be relevant to our use.
>
> If 0.5 and 0.6 are different in some incompatible way, we need  
> informationon what to change, sample files, etc. I don't think we  
> haveany active OSMusers on our lists, so if you're interested in making  
> this
> better, you can advance things. If it's been broken since 2009 and you're 
> the first to notice, we should probably drop it as it's received only 
> mechanical changes since 2008. The first step will be to identify the  
> needed changes.
>If you're ready to tackle it, the OSM code is a little grubby, but you  
> can see it at
> https://code.google.com/p/gpsbabel/source/browse/trunk/gpsbabel/osm.cc

I wrote back

> Well, all programs using .osm files understand version='0.6' now but
> some programs (like well-known josm) complain now when trying to
> open a file with version='0.5' string.

and reply on that

> I just committed the change, but I've A) marked OSM for deprecationsince  
> you're apparently the only one that's used it in five yeras andB) find  
> gratuitous, pointlessly incompatible changes silly.

I use gpsbabel not very often and don't know about other osm users but
there might be some .cc developpers which might want to check their code  
(1).

greetings
Roman

(1) https://code.google.com/p/gpsbabel/source/browse/trunk/gpsbabel/osm.cc
(2) http://sourceforge.net/p/gpsbabel/mailman/message/32426224/
(3) http://sourceforge.net/p/gpsbabel/mailman/message/32434559/