Changelog • geobounds

geobounds (development version)

Country inputs now reject empty or wholly unmatched values, and Kosovo aliases must match "Kosovo" or "XKX" exactly.
gb_clear_cache() now rejects unsafe cache locations before recursively deleting cached data. Cache functions also validate scalar arguments, report directory creation failures clearly and confirm that requested deletions succeeded.
gb_get() now rejects missing or non-scalar download options and invalid cache directory values before requesting data. Invalid cached archives are removed with an actionable error so a subsequent request can download them again.
gb_get_max_adm_lvl() now derives the maximum level from each ADM label instead of assuming that available metadata levels are consecutive.
gb_get_world() now returns NULL when a download fails or no requested country is available, and validates download options before requesting data.

CRAN release: 2026-07-08

Changed the software license from CC BY 4.0 to MIT and clarified that downloaded boundaries and included figures retain the licenses and attribution requirements of geoBoundaries and their original sources. Documentation now distinguishes the varying gbOpen licenses, UN OCHA terms and the non-commercial restriction on UN SALB boundaries. Downloads from gbAuthoritative now display a licensing notice.

CRAN release: 2026-05-29

Improved documentation and user-facing messages to align terminology across roxygen2 and narrative documentation and clarify package output.

CRAN release: 2026-03-24

CRAN release: 2026-02-11

First CRAN release.

Functions for downloading boundaries have been renamed to follow the convention object_verb() (see https://devguide.ropensci.org/pkg_building.html):

get_gb() -> gb_get().
?get_gb_adm family -> ?gb_get_adm family.
get_gb_cgaz() -> gb_get_world(). gb_get_cgaz() is also available for backward compatibility as an alias of gb_get_world().
get_gb_meta() -> gb_get_metadata().

Additionally, the metadata argument has been removed. Use gb_get_metadata() instead.

Added a DOI.
All download functions now use .zip archives containing .shp files instead of .geojson or .gpkg files, removing the geojsonsf dependency from Imports.
All download functions now return MULTIPOLYGON geometries.
All download functions now return NULL without an error or warning when a country file is unavailable.
All download functions now retry transient request failures with httr2::req_retry().
Cached files from previous package versions are no longer reused because the source archive format changed.
Country matching now improves detection for Antarctica and Kosovo.
gb_get*() functions now allow mixed country argument types, such as gb_get(country = c("Germany", "USA")).
gb_get_adm5() was added.
gb_get_max_adm_lvl() was added.
gb_get_world() now retrieves the latest boundaries available from the repository at https://github.com/wmgeolab/geoBoundaries/tree/main/releaseData.