Jekyll2025-12-10T00:07:58+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/feed.xmlGeoDeskGeospatial Analysis for OpenStreetMap{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}GeoDesk 2.02025-09-30T00:00:00+00:002025-09-30T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2025/09/30/geodesk-2-0We’re excited to announce GeoDesk 2.0 — a major upgrade with a brand-new GOL Tool and faster, simplified workflows.

  • The GOL Tool is now a stand-alone executable (< 1 MB), no JVM required (supports Windows, Linux and Intel/ARM macOS)

  • 2x to 10x faster operations: build a planet-scale GOL in 15 minutes; extract all the world’s rivers as GeoJSON in seconds

  • Simplified command options, progress bars, and colorized output

  • gol query now includes an interactive mode for complex queries

  • Visualize query results instantly with the new gol map command

See the full list in the release notes.

We’ve redesigned the GOL format to be even more compact and efficient, and to enable incremental updates. Full update support will ship later this year.

The new format requires GeoDesk SDK 2.0 or later. While the query API remains unchanged, you should see performance gains from the upgrades.

To ease the transition, we’ll continue maintaining the 1.x line. Documentation for 1.x remains available at docs1.geodesk.com.

GOL Tool: download • repo • documentation

GeoDesk for Python: pip install geodesk -U • repo • documentation

GeoDesk for Java: repo • documentation • JavaDoc

GeoDesk for C++: repo • documentation • API docs

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}New Releases: 1.1 (Java), 1.2 (Python) and 1.0 (C++)2025-08-05T00:00:00+00:002025-08-05T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2025/08/05/new-releasesWe’ve shipped three new releases:

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}GeoDesk for C++2024-11-27T00:00:00+00:002024-11-27T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2024/11/27/geodesk-for-cppWe’re excited to announce the latest edition of our GeoDesk OpenStreetMap Toolkit, this time for C++.

The GeoDesk C++ library is lightweight (250 KB compiled), without any link-time dependencies. It supports Windows, Linux and MacOS. Its query engine runs entirely in-process, without any need for a database server or other external services. And, of course, it’s free and open-source.

Just like the Java and Python editions, GeoDesk for C++ supports a wide range of queries (within(), around(), crossing(), nodes of a way, members of a relation) and standard geospatial operations, such as computing areas and distances. For more advanced capabilities, you can also integrate it with the popular GEOS library.

This is an early access release – some of the documented capabilities are not yet fully implemented (Please see the release notes for details). As always, we’re grateful for bug reports and other suggestions for improvement.

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}New Releases: 0.2 (Python) &amp; 0.2.1 (Java)2024-09-17T00:00:00+00:002024-09-17T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2024/09/17/new-releasesWe’ve shipped two releases today:

GeoDesk for Python 0.2

  • Breaking changes: The filter methods intersects, contains and crosses are now called intersecting, containing and crossing, matching the naming style used by GeoDesk for Java.

    Examples:

      areas.containing(my_location)
  bridges.crossing(danube)

  • Support for Python 3.13

  • Support for ARM-based Macs (experimental)

  • Various bug fixes concerning the handling of numeric tag values and spatial-filter edge cases

Install / upgrade: pip install geodesk -U

GeoDesk for Java 0.2.1

We’ve completed the transition to the simplified API, which now covers all relational operations, such as Feature.parents().

For Maven projects, use:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.geodesk</groupId>
    <artifactId>geodesk</artifactId>
    <version>0.2.1</version>
</dependency>

For Gradle:

dependencies { implementation 'com.geodesk:geodesk:0.2.1' }
]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}Geometric Filters in GeoDesk for Python 0.1.102024-04-03T00:00:00+00:002024-04-03T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2024/04/03/geometric-filtersGeoDesk for Python Version 0.1.10 introduces geometric filters, which select features based on the properties of their shape. Four new filter methods are available in this release:

  • min_area()

  • max_area()

  • min_length()

  • max_length()

These filters are particularly useful for quality assurance of OpenStreetMap data – they quickly identify features that are abnormally large or small, such as buildings that are classified as “houses,” but in reality represent sheds or garages.

Install / upgrade: pip install geodesk -U

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}GeoDesk for Python 0.1.42024-01-10T00:00:00+00:002024-01-10T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2024/01/10/geodesk-for-python-0-1-4GeoDesk for Python Version 0.1.4 is now available.

  • Large-area spatial queries are 4x to 30x faster. GeoDesk now finds the 60+ million mapped buildings in the U.S. in less than one second (10x 2.3GHz Xeon, 32 GB RAM, NVMe SSD)

  • Area calculations for features near the polar regions are significantly more accurate (A scaling bug previously caused distortions of areas above 65 degrees latitude)

  • Other fixes (release notes)

Install / upgrade: pip install geodesk -U

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}New Releases: 0.1.9 (Java) &amp; 0.1.1 (Python)2023-12-11T00:00:00+00:002023-12-11T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2023/12/11/new-releasesWe’ve shipped two releases today:

GeoDesk for Java 0.1.9

Includes the GOL Tool (download)

Bug Fixes

  • OsmPbfReader now shuts down cleanly when reading a corrupt source file (gol-tool#104) – this bug caused gol build to hang on truncated .osm.pbf files.

  • gol build: Fixed encoding bug that caused access to certain way-nodes to fail (gol-tool#105) Note: We recommend re-building any GOL with more than 16K tiles

Other Changes

  • MapMaker now uses the standard OSM Carto style by default (geodesk-py#17)

GeoDesk for Python 0.1.1

Install / upgrade: pip install geodesk -U

Enhancements

  • Creating Coordinate objects is now easier using lonlat() and latlon() (geodesk-py#10)

  • Feature sets now support __contains__ for Python’s in operator (geodesk-py#23)

  • Number of tags in a Tags object can now be obtained using len()

  • Partial support for Features.tiles

Deprecations

  • Feature.is_placeholder has been deprecated and will be removed in the next major release. Missing relation members will no longer be represented by a “placeholder” feature, but will be omitted from the relation, and the relation will be tagged geodesk:missing_members=yes.

Bug fixes

  • Features.members_of() now properly returns an empty set if called on features that are not relations (geodesk-py#18)

  • Tags: Fixed bug that caused certain tags to be skipped while iterating

Other changes

  • Maps now use the standard OSM Carto style by default (geodesk-py#17)

Related issues & workarounds

  • geodesk-py#19: Way-node retrieval may fail when querying large GOLs (16K+ tiles) that were built with GOL Tool version 0.1.8 or below, due to an encoding bug in gol build (gol-tool#105). We recommend upgrading your GOL Tool and re-building any affected GOLs.
]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}GeoDesk for Python Released2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:002023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2023/11/07/geodesk-for-python-releasedWe are excited to announce our first release of GeoDesk for Python: Query, analyze, display and transform OpenStreetMap features using the world’s most popular scripting language — on Windows, Linux and MacOS.

  • Store the entire world-wide OSM dataset locally in under 100 GB (or any extract you wish)

  • Query features based on type, tags and spatial relationships (e.g. intersects, within, contains, connects_to) — 50x faster than SQL

  • Measure features: length, area, distance

  • Explore object graphs (nodes of ways, members of relations)

  • Obtain geometric shapes and process them using Shapely (Python wrapper for GEOS)

  • Convert features to various formats (just GeoJSON and WKT for now, but more are coming)

  • 100% free & open-source

Try it now!

Learn more:

We appreciate your feedback! Reach out on GitHub if you run into difficulties, and follow @geodesk@en.osm.town to receive updates on future releases and other helpful tips about OpenStreetMap and geospatial software.

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}GeoDesk Version 0.1.0 EA Released2022-11-08T00:00:00+00:002022-11-08T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2022/11/08/version-0-1-0-releasedWe are pleased to release GeoDesk Version 0.1 EA.

As this is still an Early Access release, some documented features may not yet be available. Please check the release notes for details.

The following GitHub repositories are now publicly accessible:

Please visit our download page for pre-built binaries, and check out the GeoDesk Tutorial for a quick introduction.

You will need to install the gol tool in order to build geographic object libraries from OpenStreetMap data. Alternatively, you can use the sample tile set (covering Switzerland only), which is available at https://data.geodesk.com/switzerland. Total size of this tile set is just under 400 MB. Tiles are automatically downloaded if you specify this URL when opening a local GOL.

We appreciate your feedback! Reach out on GitHub if you run into difficulties, and follow @GeoDeskTeam to receive updates on future releases and other helpful tips about OpenStreetMap and geospatial software.

]]>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil}Coming Soon!2022-10-24T00:00:00+00:002022-10-24T00:00:00+00:00https://www.geodesk.com/2022/10/24/coming-soonWe are in the final stages of releasing GeoDesk version 0.1.

Follow @GeoDeskTeam on Twitter to get notified of our launch.

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