[Qgis-user] Official check of plugins on "official" repository?

[Agustin Lobo]

Dear Alexandre,
I understand the limitations of human resources. And my acknowledgment
to those involved in the QGIS project.
All I'm asking is a consistent terminology so that users are fully
aware of the potential problems: the only "official" or
fully tested plugins should be those which are now named "featured".
And the notice "Plugins are developed by independent organizations and
developers,
the QGIS organization does not take any responsibility for them" (or
similar), should be in QGIS Plugins/Manage and Install Plugins.
I'm already very involved on reporting issues in the github systems of
the plugins I use. Perhaps a system to report eventual problems caused
by the plugins in QGIS
could be considered so that QGIS users could use that information to
decide whether to install a given plugin or not. The current situation
in which installing or running a plugin can crash QGIS goes
against QGIS being contemplated as a stable and reliable software.
Hope QGIS developers find my comments useful.
Best,

On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 10:23 AM Alexandre Neto via QGIS-User
<qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
> Hello Agustin,
>
> I understand your point and I understand the value of what you propose. Nevertheless, a full functionality check of each plugin would require human resources that the qgis.org project does not have.
>
> The meaning of oficial plugin repository comes from a time that there was no centralized place to search for plugins. You would need to find repositories scattered all over the internet and add it manually. At some point it was decided to centralise it as much as possible in one place.
>
> The only plugins that are under qqgis.org responsibility are the core plugins, the ones that come installed with QGIS.
>
> Obviously that, in an ideal world, all plugins would be highly tested before being allowed into the repository. But the small team responsible for accepting the plugins already struggle to do a "simple" requirements check, with all the new plugins and updates.
>
> Please consider to support the testing efforts. Make sure to report the issues to the respective plugin bug trackers. Consider supporting the developer's of the plugins you depend the most, so it becomes more stable and reliable.
>
> Alex Neto
>
> On Thu Nov 16, 2023, 08:23 AM GMT, Agustin Lobo wrote:
>
> Thanks for the clarification,
>
> They are called featured plugins
>
>
> Thus, the term is misleading. "featured" does not mean "certified".
> In any case, the bottom issue is that plugins causing problems in QGIS
> beyond the plugin itself, and in particular those just crashing QGIS
> should not be entitled to be in the official repository or, at least,
> required to keep the "experimental" tag.
> In the absence of further information, the term "official" implies,
> for the (naive?) user, a commitment to their functionality from the
> QGIS steering committee.
> I believe that the note in the QGIS plugins web portal;
> "Plugins are developed by independent organizations and developers,
> the QGIS organization does not take any responsibility for them."
> is somehow conflicting with the term "official". And while all users
> will read the term "official", very few will reach the aforementioned
> note.
> (perhaps this notice should also be in the QGIS plugins menu itself).
>
> Hope this helps to keep QGIS to be seen as a stable and reliable tool.
>
> Agus
>
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 2:08 PM Alexandre Neto <senhor.neto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hello Agustin,
>
>
> Due to the nature/diversity of QGIS third party plugins design there's no automatic review of the plugins. There's a manual review process to confirm that they comply with some rules [1], but nothing to test if the plugin does what it advertises or if in some situations may cause crashes.
>
> This being said, there are few plugins that have the qgis.org "certification". They are called featured plugins.
>
> Hope it helped
>
>
> [1] https://plugins.qgis.org/publish/
>
> A quarta, 15/11/2023, 07:16, Agustin Lobo via QGIS-User <qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> escreveu:
>
>
> I am surprised that some plugins downloaded from the official qgis
> repository cause problems in QGIS, sometimes even a crash.
> In the R project, there is a review system that automatically checks
> packages to be uploaded (and to remain) on the equivalent official
> repository.
> Is there an equivalent checking process for QGIS plugins? As a lot of
> important GIS functionality in QGIS is provided by plugins, I think
> this stability check would avoid a lot of user frustration.
>
> Agus
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