[Qgis-developer] Developing Plugins

[Tim Sutton]

Hi Peter

On 4/3/06, Peter Ersts <ersts at amnh.org> wrote:
> QGis Developers,
>
> I am new to QGis+Qt

Welcome!

 and would like a little push in the right direction
> regarding developing plugins. I apologize ahead of time, if I have just
> overlooked something that is already on the web.
>

No problem

> --Most of the instructions on the wiki are for Linux and the
> pluging-template uses aclocal, automake etc.

Yes all development has historically been Linux centric thusfar -
building for windows has been an afterthought - this is changing with
the upcoming 0.8 release.

>Is it recommended that
> plugins be developed on Linux?

Yes. Life will be easiest for you at this stage and you will get more
ready access to help from this list if you do...

Are there any instructions/hints for
> developing on a Windows box?
>

Mateusz Loskot has been implmenting a build environment using VC++ -
his patches are making their way into SVN - Ill ask him to announce on
this list when he thinks its ready for general consumption. His notes
on the process are here:

http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/BuildingOnWindows

> --My primary target audience for a plugin would be PC users, but the
> plugin would obviously be usable on all platforms. If a plugin is
> developed under Linux is it just a matter of updating the makefile to
> get the plugin to compile on Windows.
>

Assuming you havent introduced new library dependencies then in general yes.

> --I have been working with Qt 4.1.2 and the plugin-template is written
> with an older version of Qt, is it recommended that Qt 3.x.x be used? If
> it is possible to develop on Windows, does anyone have a link to a
> download site where I can get Qt 3.x for Windows --- Both Qt3 and Qt4
> are available for Debian.

Use of Qt3 is depreacted as of 0.7.4 release of QGIS. All future
releases of QGIS for the forseeable future will be based on Qt4. Qt3
for windows is not free/open source which is one of the main
incentives for porting everything to Qt4.

>
> Thank you in advance,

No problem. Feel free to pop in to the IRC channel #qgis on
freenode.net for real time assistance. I would suggest you develop
your plugins against the SVN trunk version so that its compatible with
the new release of QGIS 0.8 when it comes out. I will be rechecking
the plugin generation scripts and tutorials etc over the next few
weeks so will welcome any feed back.

Regards


--
Tim Sutton

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