Install avce00 with Homebrew, apt

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• avcdelete
• avcexport
• avcimport
• avctest

Project history

AVCE00 first appeared in 1999 as a practical reverse-engineering project for legacy GIS interchange. The documentation says the ESRI coverage file format was not documented, so the library was based on analysis of binary dumps and expected to evolve as the GIS community learned more about the format.

The first release, version 0.1 on 31 January 1999, supported the most common file types but still had known problems. The early 1999 releases quickly added annotations, regions, routes, projection handling, E00-to-coverage creation, Windows makefiles, and command-line conversion support. By version 1.1 in January 2000 it supported PC Arc/Info coverages, and by version 1.2 in October 2000 it had switched to an MIT-style license and added PC coverage write support.

The last documented major release, 2.0.0 on 17 August 2006, added direct E00 reading functions rather than requiring translation to a binary coverage first. The history notes that those functions were used for OGR E00 read support, connecting AVCE00 directly to the broader GDAL/OGR GIS ecosystem.

Adoption history

AVCE00's adoption history is mostly the history of old GIS data surviving into modern package sets. Arc/Info binary coverages and E00 export files are legacy formats, but institutions, map archives, and migration projects still encounter them.

The project gained practical downstream importance because its 2.0.0 direct E00 reader contributed to OGR support. Even when users interact through higher-level GIS software, AVCE00 remains part of the tool lineage that made old Arc/Info interchange data accessible outside Arc/Info itself.

How it is used

The package contains tools for GIS users and APIs for GIS developers. `avcexport` reads a binary Arc/Info coverage and writes E00; `avcimport` reads E00 and creates a binary coverage; the library exposes line-oriented read/write functions that can be plugged into existing E00 translators.

AVCE00 matters when a user has old coverage directories, needs E00 interchange, or wants a scriptable converter for a proprietary historical format. It is not a general GIS library; it is a focused compatibility layer for a narrow but durable data-preservation problem.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, AVCE00 is a classic preservation package: small C code, old file formats, command-line conversion utilities, and high value when one ancient dataset arrives. It can sit untouched for years and still be exactly the missing tool in a migration.

Its upstream style is also archetypal: a static MapTools site, HTML documentation, a HISTORY.TXT file, and downloadable source rather than a modern forge. The correct enrichment is therefore history-rich but repository-null.

Timeline

• 1999-01-31: version 0.1 first released with support for the most common file types.
• 1999-02-24: version 0.2 added annotations, region coverage support, routes testing, and improved command-line conversion behavior.
• 1999-05-10: version 0.3 added alpha support for creating coverages from E00.
• 2000-01-10: version 1.1 added PC Arc/Info coverage support.
• 2000-10-17: version 1.2 switched to an MIT-style license and added PC coverage write support.
• 2006-08-17: version 2.0.0 added direct E00 read functions used in OGR E00 read support.

Related projects

• E00Compr is the sibling MapTools library for compressed E00 files.
• OGR/GDAL is the notable downstream GIS stack mentioned in the AVCE00 2.0.0 history.
• ESRI Arc/Info coverages and E00 export files are the historical formats AVCE00 targets.

Sources

• http://avce00.maptools.org/avce00/HISTORY.TXT
• http://avce00.maptools.org/avce00/avce00.html
• http://avce00.maptools.org/avce00/index.html
• https://gdal.org/en/stable/drivers/vector/avce00.html