[GRASS-dev] Fwd: Re: Upcoming 7.2.0: review which addons to move to core

[Moritz Lennert]

On 05/10/16 17:14, Paulo van Breugel wrote:
>
>
> On 05-10-16 16:50, Sören Gebbert wrote:
>>
>>
>> 2016-10-05 16:46 GMT+02:00 Moritz Lennert
>> <mlennert at club.worldonline.be <mailto:mlennert at club.worldonline.be>>:
>>
>>     On 05/10/16 16:29, Paulo van Breugel wrote:
>>
>>
>>         On 05-10-16 15 <tel:05-10-16%2015>:20, Moritz Lennert wrote:
>>
>>             Maybe we should ask the users of whether this distinction
>>             between
>>             modules and core and extensions is really relevant for
>>             them, or
>>             whether most are perfectly happy to just install extensions.
>>
>>
>>         Since you are asking :-) , as an user, my main interest is in good
>>         documentation and reproducible examples (which I can than also
>>         use to
>>         see if outputs make sense to me as an user). In that respect
>>         there is no
>>         inherent difference between core modules and extensions. What is
>>         different is that many (most?) of the core functions are
>>         accessible
>>         through the menu. I personally don't find that very important,
>>         especially with the modules tab giving fairly easy access to
>>         extensions,
>>         but I can imagine that for new / other users, especially those
>>         more
>>         inclined to menu-driven applications, this may make a difference.
>>
>>
>>     Thank you, Paulo, for this feedback.
>>
>>     This means that finding a means to more easily integrate addon
>>     modules into menus might be a task to keep in mind.
>>
>>     Maybe the startup script could check the .grass7/addons directory
>>     and automatically create an 'addons' menu using [1] ? Maybe the
>>     mecanism can be changed in a way to just allow to create toolboxes
>>     and that these are automatically integrated into the main menu ?
>>
>>     Just brainstorming, here...
>>
>>
>> How about g.extension will create a menu entry based on the modules
>> keywords when it installs the module? And it will remove the entry
>> when the module gets removed?
>
> These sound like interesting options. I don't have a very good idea what
> would be the best approach, but I would caution against full freedom for
> the module to install itself in any location in the menu. I am having in
> mind how some QGIS addons create menu items, including in the top-level
> menu, resulting in what for me is a more chaotic bloated environment. In
> that sense, perhaps there could even be an option at installation to
> prevent the module from creating a menu item.

The current toolboxes mecanism allows for a specific "user modules" menu 
which automatically contains anything which is in the 
.grass7/toolboxes/toolboxes.xml file. So if we just put all addons 
there, this might avoid the chaos you are talking about.

And as g.extension already does the work of reading the module 
description and keyword, it shouldn't be too complicated to integrate 
each new module into a toolbox named by the first keyword (raster, 
vector, imagery, etc) and to use its description as label.

Moritz