Version 8.6.0-beta2 Announcement

Authors:

Project Steering Committee

Last Updated:

2025-11-18

Status:

Draft

The MapServer Team is pleased to announce the second beta release of MapServer 8.6.0-beta2

The upcoming 8.6 release brings a number of major new features that are briefly summarized in this document. The full list of changes can be found in MapServer 8.6 Changelog. The Migration Guide also contains more detailed examples of the major changes.

Major New Features Coming in MapServer 8.6

  • new MapServer index page (#7350)

  • WMS GetFeatureInfo: add options to precisely identify points through their symbols (#7318)

  • add FALLBACK parameter for CLASS object, to be applied if none of the previously defined classes has been applied (#7309)

  • add vendorSpecificParameters to OpenAPI document (#7295)

Migration Guide

Head to the Migration Guide for mapfile examples of the major 8.4.0 changes.

Source Code Download

The source for this release can be downloaded at:

Binary Distributions

Binary distributions will be available in the coming days:

  • Debian binaries of 8.6.0-beta1 are already available: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mapserver

  • OSGeoLive 17.0 release process is happening now, but it will soon include MapServer 8.6.0-beta1

  • UbuntuGIS will follow the OSGeoLive release and will then include MapServer 8.6.0-beta1

  • MS4W users have already been using branch-8-6 code, but watch for a new release shortly containing the 8.6.0-beta1 changes at: https://ms4w.com

Other binary distributions listed on the download page should also be updated with binaries for the new release shortly.

Documentation

The entire 8.4.0 documentation is also available as a PDF document PDF icon (1143 pages, with clickable table of contents as well).

Thanks

Thank you to all of the users, developers, and supporters of MapServer. Enjoy!

The MapServer Team