Prune history

GpsPrune has been around since 2006, in one form or another, and features have been added at each version. For the current version (version 23.2), see the download page. You can also browse the whole history of the source at github.com/activityworkshop/GpsPrune.

Version history

This table shows all the versions of GpsPrune released to date. For full details on the change history, see the readme.txt file included in each jar. For screenshots from all these releases, see the current screenshots and old screenshots.

VersionNicknamePublishedFeaturesClassesLines
1
The first one28 September 2006Load and save of text files, delete and compress, export KML548300
2
The 3-d one29 March 2007Interactive 3d view, POV export, waypoint list8214000
3
The one with photos2 August 2007Load GPX, KML, JPG, save Exif, KMZ10217000
4
The correlating one29 January 2008Automatic photo correlation, export GPX
Also version 4.1, 22 February 2008, with an exiftool fix
11520000
5
The segmented one11 May 2008Track segment handling, browser launching12121000
6
The one with maps6 October 2008Integrated openstreetmaps, cut/move function, load using GPSBabel13724000
7
The charting one12 February 2009Charts, configurable maps, load KMZ, GPX.ZIP, more compression15827000
8
The configurable one17 September 2009Load NMEA, from gpsies.com, scale bar, save config17931000
9
The colourful one13 February 2010Configurable colours, paste coordinates, load xml.gz, copy xml source19133000
10
The Space Shuttle one4 May 2010Lookup altitudes with SRTM, tile caching, custom layered maps21335000
11
The uploading one6 August 2010Upload to gpsies.com, selective gpx load, svg export
Also version 11.1, 30 August 2010, with a UTF8 fix, and 11.2, 26 September 2010, with an ISO8859_15 fix
22637000
12
The audio and wiki one3 December 2010Load, correlate, play audio files, wikipedia functions, download OSM, draw tracks
Also version 12.1, 31 December 2010 with a zoom fix
26841000
13
The GpsPrune one15 August 2011Load images from KMZ, tile cache management, import file through GPSBabel, recent files
Also version 13.1, 17 October 2011, with map sources fixes, 13.2, 28 November 2011, with Russian texts,
13.3, 21 February 2012, with resilience fixes and Italian, and 13.4, 8 May 2012, with minor fixes
27744000
14
The dragging one1 October 2012Dragging points, nautical miles, deleting points inside a rectangle
Also version 14.1, 22 January 2013 with translations
29246000
15
The estimating one24 March 2013Estimating times, map imagery in pov output, image export, GPSBabel filters
Also version 15.1, 3 July 2013, with various fixes, and 15.2, 7 November 2013, with more minor fixes
32052000
16
The weather-forecasting one3 February 2014Weather forecasts, 3d terrain, track splitting, srtm downloading
Also version 16.1, 3 March 2014, with terrain fixes, 16.2, 1 April 2014, with utf-8 fixes and removal of cloudmade maps, and 16.3, 12 July 2014, with 3d terrain improvements
34756000
17
The even more colourful one12 September 2014Point colourers, delete by date, waypoint sorting
Also version 17.1, 28 October 2014, with minor fixes, and 17.2, 15 February 2015, also with minor fixes and translations
37960000
18
The automatically playing one20 July 2015Autoplay function, online services, marking ski lifts
Also version 18.1, 29 September 2015, with a bug fix, photo popup updating and wikimedia; 18.2, 14 December 2015, with ampersand fix; 18.3, 12 February 2016, with another ampersand fix and remembering of window position; 18.4, 24 April 2016, with GPSBabel format updates and removal of opencaching.com; 18.5, 25 July 2016, with bug fixes and translations; 18.6, 18 December 2016, with an SRTM bugfix
39062000
19
The one with icons and arrows12 May 2018Waypoint icons, timezones, OSM points
Also version 19.1, 25 August 2018, with performance improvements and GraphHopper routing; 19.2, 14 December 2018 with various fixes
42266000
20
The one with extra geocaching29 March 2020Halfway markers, point projection, pluscodes, coordinate lists
Also version 20.1, 27 December 2020 & Version 20.2, 31 January 2021, with some minor bugfixes and improvements; Version 20.3, 5 April 2021 with an SRTM update; Version 20.4, 10 May 2021 with geojson and 3d
40765000
21
The lockdown one1 November 2021High-res SRTM, json, projecting circles, truncation
Also version 21.1, 6 February 2022, with Catalan and parameterized URLs; Version 21.2, 4 April 2022 with high-resolution improvements; Version 21.3 14 May 2022 with bugfixes
42067000
22
The one with coloured waypoints31 August 2022Coloured waypoint icons according to point type, 3d scaling
Also version 22.1, 3 September 2022 with updates to online services; Version 22.2, 2 October 2022 with bugfixes
43467000
23
The Prune-coloured one11 June 2023New icon set, remove duplicate waypoints, lots of restructuring
Also version 23.1, 23 July 2023 with bugfixes, and version 23.2, 25 September 2023 with more bugfixes
45265000

Download history

The number of downloads of GpsPrune has increased steadily over the months as the program has become more useful and better publicised. Some landmarks:

September 2006 - first version made available for download
November 2006 - downloads exceed 10 per month
April 2007 - total downloads exceed 100
August 2007 - downloads exceed 100 per month
January 2008 - total downloads exceed 1000
October 2008 - downloads exceed 1000 per month
January 2009 - total downloads exceed 10000
October 2009 - downloads of version 7 exceed 10,000
May 2010 - downloads of version 10 peak at over 100 per day
August 2010 - total downloads exceed 100 per day
October 2010 - both Debian's and Ubuntu's popcon tools show more than 100 installs each
March 2011 - total of Debian's and Ubuntu's popcon tools show more than 1000 installs
November 2012 - total downloads exceed 100,000
May 2013 - Debian's popcon tool shows 100 "regular users" (not just installs)
May 2015 - Ubuntu's popcon tool shows more GpsPrune votes than Viking votes for the first time
May 2015 - Debian's popcon tool shows more GpsPrune votes than Viking votes for the first time

There are a few reasons why these numbers are horribly inaccurate. Firstly, they may underestimate the real number of downloads because of alternative distribution methods, other websites offering Prune downloads, downloads from linux package repositories, people emailing or copying the files around. But more realistically they hugely overestimate the number of downloads from this site because of crawling bots, because of people downloading the file more than once, and as I recently discovered, because the webalizer software also counts log entries with status code 206, which isn't a real download, it's a partial download. So if a client takes several requests to download the jar, webalizer unfortunately counts this as several downloads. I can only assume that this is a webalizer bug.

But, even allowing for the poor accuracy of these absolute numbers, they're still useful to look at the increase in the number of downloads - it's clearly showing a continual increase in the popularity of the program.

Popcon

It's not always easy to work out how many people use GpsPrune. Users don't need to pay money, or register, they can download it from anywhere and run it anywhere, so I don't know whether people are using it or not. Especially because GpsPrune specifically does not track its users, or phone home, or use any such tricks. So how can we see how popular GpsPrune really is?

Debian popcon graph

Well, we can't tell any absolute numbers, but some GpsPrune users use Debian Linux, and some of those users also use a Debian tool called popcon which reports (anonymously) back to the Debian project which packages are being used. It's only a small subset of users, and obviously the absolute numbers don't mean anything, but what we can do is compare GpsPrune's numbers over time, and compare GpsPrune's numbers against other, similar packages.

The graph on the right shows the relative popularity of GpsPrune (purple) compared to Viking (in green) over time (until May 2022). Viking is much older than GpsPrune but shares many features. The focus is different though, Viking is much more oriented towards a traditional (and powerful) GIS tool, whereas GpsPrune aims to be easier to use for regular GPS users who just want tracks and maps.

The horizontal scale of the map goes from GpsPrune's entry to Debian in 2010, and shows how Viking has always had more users. GpsPrune enjoyed a rapid rise in users for the first few years, before flattening off to reach quite a similar state to that of Viking. Still the number of installs of Viking is consistently higher, but now the number of users is very similar.

There are other comparisons one can make, for example (on Debian) GpsPrune has had many more users than gpscorrelate or gpxviewer just to name two. On the other hand, there are well over three GPSBabel users per Viking user, but less than half of one gpsbabel-gui user. As well as many command line users of GPSBabel, I hope people are using GpsPrune as a gui for GPSBabel's functions, especially since the new filters became available in version 15.

File formats

The following table shows the file formats understood by GpsPrune, and whether reading and/or writing is supported. The numbers in the table indicate the version number of GpsPrune at which the support was introduced.

File FormatReading supportWriting support
TextDelimited text file11
Xml (Kml)Google Earth Xml format31
Xml (Kml)KML with Google Extensions1314
Xml (Gpx)Standard Xml format34
PovFor 3d rendering by Povray-2
Jpeg (Exif)Exif tags of photographs33
KmzCompressed Kml73
NmeaNmea messages8-
ZipZipped gpx or kml7-
GzGzipped gpx or kml9-
GeoJSONA specific kind of Json20.4-
Via GPSBabel to/from GPS67
To/from gpsies.com8-1911-19
Charts via gnuplot to SVG-7
3d plot to SVG-11-18

To do

There are several additional features planned which have not yet been implemented. The current status of development is shown in the development page, and some statistics about the development history in dev stats.

Of course any suggestions or contributions, especially multi-lingual translation expertise, would be very gratefully received! Please see the development page for details on how to help with this, for example using the Translatinator.

Screenshots // How-tos // How-tos (français) // How-tos (deutsch) // How-tos (español) // User guide // Demo videos // Problem-solving // Configuration // Download // Dependencies // What's new // Development // Wishlist // History // Old Screenshots // Internet Fame // User survey // Dev stats