[Qgis-developer] python as plugin

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi there,

I've been thinking about turning the python support into a plugin.  If
we compile with Python support, we have a static python dependency in
the qgis binary.

I think that's an issue for packaging.  With python support as plugin,
we could split the python plugin into a separate shared library.  If
python isn't there, the load of the plugin simply fails (similar to the
GRASS plugin).

On Debian for instance that would open the possiblity to split off the
python depencency to a separate package (currently the qgis executable
itself depends on python) and make providing individual packages for
different python version easier.

On Windows we wouldn't need to package python with qgis. We'd just
notify the user that python is available and will appear when python is
installed.

Maybe we should do the same for GRASS.  Instead of packaging GRASS with
QGIS on windows, we'd dynamically depend on the WinGRASS package.

This could be done by implementing plugin providers implemented in C++
that allow to load, unload and list available and loaded plugins.  The
plugin provider would be registered with the plugin registry on load.

Initially there would be a builtin plugin provider for C++ plugins and a
provider plugin for python plugins.  That plugin would depends on the
python library and also provide the python bindings.

That way we could also generalize the handling of plugins in QgisApp and
the plugin manager and eliminate HAVE_PYTHON there.

Comments?


Jürgen

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Jürgen E. Fischer         norBIT GmbH               Tel. +49-4931-918175-0
Dipl.-Inf. (FH)           Rheinstraße 13            Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
Software Engineer         D-26506 Norden               http://www.norbit.de

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