v3 FAQ

The three questions everyone asks about the v3 transition. The general FAQ lives on the home page.

Will v2 still be maintained?

Yes. The 2.8.x line stays on npm and keeps receiving fixes: most recently the GeoTIFF codec work (JPEG/ZSTD/LERC, April 2026) and a worker memory-leak fix, all merged on the v2 branch. New features land in v3 only. There is no end-of-life date for v2; migrate on your schedule with the migration guide.

Which GDAL version does v3 ship?

GDAL 3.13.1, with PROJ and the rest of the native stack, prebuilt through the cpp.js package registry. Upstream releases are tracked as dependency bumps, so version updates are routine rather than rebuild projects. The v2 line is on GDAL 3.8.x.

Does it work in Node.js?

Yes. Same imports as the browser, and GDAL reads/writes the host filesystem directly (no virtual FS hop). Use the Rollup/Webpack plugin targeting Node, or the prebuilt Node build from @gdal3.js/wasm-bundle.

Honest caveat from the maintainers, on record since the v2 README: if you're Node-only, need maximum throughput, and can install native binaries, a native GDAL binding will be faster than wasm. gdal3.js trades peak speed for zero native dependencies and identical code across runtimes.