[QGIS-Developer] Leveraging Conda-Forge to create QGIS installers ?

Fri Jan 7 12:04:48 PST 2022

Could Spack or Linuxbrew/Homebrew be used to create QGIS installers on Mac
OS? While these tools can also be used under WSL, I believe Spack will be
providing a native build support on Windows in the near future.

On Tue, Jan 4, 2022 at 10:39 AM Alexandre Neto <senhor.neto at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Alessandro,
>
> Thank you for raising the subject.
>
> QGIS on conda is not at is best shape right now, as we are stuck with the
> lack of a full featured Qt 5.15. The current package is lacking webengine
> that was split. The good news is it's already built on OSX arm64 which may
> be useful in the future.
>
> Alexandre Neto
>
> A terça, 4/01/2022, 16:47, Alessandro Pasotti <apasotti at gmail.com>
> escreveu:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Just a quick followup on this: we briefly discussed this topic within the
>> PSC and the conclusion was that this is not a PSC matter.
>>
>> Kind regards.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 12:16 AM Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 10 Nov 2021 at 00:42, Alexandre Neto <senhor.neto at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > No comments?l
>>> >
>>> > I was expecting at least a bit of discussion about this.
>>>
>>> Honestly, I see it as a bit of a non-starter. Conda is still stuck to
>>> such an old Qt version that you can't build anything past QGIS 3.18.
>>>
>>> To me that's reflective of a larger issue with the ecosystem, not an
>>> isolated example. These mega-packaging-everything projects just seem
>>> to consistently get bogged down by the sheer number of dependent
>>> packages they try to satisfy, resulting in an overall worse experience
>>> all round.
>>>
>>> But that's just my 2c ;)
>>>
>>> Nyall
>>>
>>>
>>> >
>>> > :-)
>>> >
>>> > Alexandre Neto
>>> >
>>> > A sábado, 6/11/2021, 20:46, Even Rouault <even.rouault at spatialys.com>
>>> escreveu:
>>> >>
>>> >> Hi,
>>> >>
>>> >> Probably a topic that can raise passions and on which I'm moderately
>>> >> legitimate to speak, but shouldn't we seriously consider leveraging
>>> the
>>> >> Conda / Conda-Forge (https://conda-forge.org/) ecosystem for QGIS
>>> >> packaging, especially on the Windows and Mac platforms ? QGIS depends
>>> on
>>> >> a lot of external dependencies, and building them and updating them is
>>> >> really about maintaining a packaging system, and QGIS has two such
>>> >> separate and bespoke systems for Windows (OSGeo4W) and Mac
>>> >> (QGIS-Mac-Packager).  The ideal vision would be that the QGIS project
>>> >> mostly maintains the bits specific to QGIS, but not be the sole
>>> >> maintainer of its dependencies such as QT, GDAL (and its many
>>> >> dependencies), PDAL, GRASS etc, as it is today. Conda-Forge provides a
>>> >> truly collaborative environment and active community that already
>>> >> bundles a number of those dependencies, and QGIS is already there (not
>>> >> full capabilities yet, due to some dependencies missing. That would be
>>> >> one of the points to address). The Conda-Forge community is really
>>> >> vibrant (if you look at
>>> >>
>>> https://github.com/conda-forge/staged-recipes/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
>>> ,
>>> >> you can see that 20 packages were added in the last 24 hours!). It is
>>> >> also a NumFocus sponsored project. It has support from a number of
>>> >> institutions. It is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
>>> >>
>>> >> There would certainly work needed to build installers from them. I
>>> found
>>> >> https://github.com/conda/constructor project where you can build
>>> >> standalone installers from Conda packages, but was told it is perhaps
>>> >> not super mature.  Even if QGIS needs require a dedicated installer
>>> with
>>> >> custom bits, leveraging already packaged dependencies would probably
>>> be
>>> >> a big enough win compared to the current situation where the whole
>>> stack
>>> >> needs to be built and rebuilt from scratch by only a few knowledgeable
>>> >> people, on non-shared infrastructure.
>>> >>
>>> >> There would be the possibility to pin dependencies at certain known
>>> good
>>> >> points, for example to base LTR builds on top of them.
>>> >>
>>> >> I guess also that Conda based installers could help for plugins that
>>> >> require installing native or Python dependencies, but that'd be
>>> already
>>> >> more a secondary advantage.
>>> >>
>>> >> Another proof that Conda is to be taken seriously:
>>> >> https://developers.arcgis.com/python/guide/understanding-conda/
>>> >>
>>> >> I'm not saying this is a magical solution: there would clearly be a
>>> >> significant amount of work and technical hurdles to solve to reach the
>>> >> same degree of maturity as our current installers, but it is probably
>>> an
>>> >> investment worth considering for the long term.
>>> >>
>>> >> Even
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> http://www.spatialys.com
>>> >> My software is free, but my time generally not.
>>> >>
>>> >> _______________________________________________
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>>> >
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Alessandro Pasotti
>> QCooperative:  www.qcooperative.net
>> ItOpen:   www.itopen.it
>>
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