[Qgis-developer] installing QGIS and PyQGIS (on windows)

[Martin Dobias]

Hi,

recently I've seen on mailing list and in irc logs that there are some
difficulties with packaging of QGIS with bindings because the bindings
depend on python, sip and pyqt4 which might or might not be on the
user's system, possibly in incompatible versions.

The main problem is that when compiled with python support, QGIS
application links to python library, so if python is not present in
the system QGIS doesn't run. When it's present but pyqt4 is missing,
it will complain at every start...

Since python support is optional in QGIS, I think the best way would
be to produce two different installation packages for windows: with
and without python support.

1. without python: an option for many people who are not interested in
the python stuff, smaller package

2. with python: this package would check for presence of python and
pyqt4 - and if not found, it will offer download and installation of
these pieces of software. once the dependencies are fulfilled, it will
install QGIS with python support.

What do you think?

For next version of QGIS I plan to resolve these problems by moving
all python-related functionality to a plugin, so in case of troubles
just the plugin won't load itself but the rest of QGIS will work well.
I also plan to improve the support by allowing more paths for plugins,
better console and possibly easier plugin installation.

Bye
Martin