QGIS 2.14 LTS "Essen" released

The QGIS version 2.14 (LTS) - Code Name "Essen" - was just released. The Linux-Hotel in Essen hosted several times past QGIS and FOSSGIS developer meetings. For a complete List of new and improved features see the 2.14 visual changelog. Professional users should now test their projects (if they haven't done so in the month prior to the release), report bugs and wait for the next point-release 2.14.x (planned for March 25) for bigger rollouts.

The new version contains a lot of polishing of existing tools. We'd like to emphasize some of the more interesting improvements:

• Virtual layers (dynamically generated/filtered based on SQL queries, realized through SQLite, supports all OGR supported vector formats)
• Improvements of widgets, in particular the "external resource widget" (for linking photos and files)
• Relations and PostgreSQL: improved support for n:m relations and a new "transaction"mode to simultaneously editing several related tables in a single transaction
• Autotrace digitizing along already existing features
• More QGIS expression functions and variables
• Cartographic label placement of point features. Symbol sizes (bounding box or circle) are now taken into account for placing or displacing labels.
• 2.5D renderer and several new methods to generate and symbolize geometries "on-the-fly"
• Size assistant for stroke-widths
• Data-defined fill and stroke opacity in SVG symbols
• Improved filtering of legends in the print composer based on map extent, expressions or atlas coverage features
• Test framework (unit tests) for Processing
• Processing: integration of the GRASS 7 network analysis functions
• GDAL/OGR 2.0 in the Windows version (improved data format support for various vector and raster formats)

We'd like to thank all volunteers, testers, developers, sponsors and donors for supporting the QGIS project and hope that the new QGIS release even better supports you for your GIS projects.