[Qgis-developer] Re: ideas for developpers)

[Martin Dobias]

Hi Borys,

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Borys Jurgiel <borys at wolf.most.org.pl> wrote:
>> * and about the plugin manager : adding a column to know the installed
>> version of the plugin (like some linux package manager), in order to
>> compare the version number, and to know if the plugin needs to be
>> re-installed --- and perhaps a warning when there is a new version of a
>> plugin
>
> I don't know C++ yet, so now I can improve Plugin Installer and add the
> features:
>  - the version column as you said
>  - the column with status indicator: upgradable/new in repository
>  - checking for updates and for news in repositories on demand and also
>   when QGIS is starting.

it would be great if you add this functionality!

> Someday this code might be attached to the Plugin Manager (when I learn C++!),
> but before 0.11 release I can implement this only in the Plugin installer.
> So what do you think about it? And what about removing the Plugin Installer
> item from the Plugins menu and launching it directly from the Manager?
> Tim, can you implement this and do you think it's suitable?

In fact, this is something that I have in my head for some time
already: to connect plugin installer with plugin manager. In fact it's
not really hard and I'm willing to do that, so far I just don't have
the concept how this should be done. But e.g. extension manager in
firefox3 looks like a good inspiration: divided into two tabs: one for
management of installed plugins (enable/disable, uninstall), other for
searching and installing new plugins.

I have also thought about rewriting plugin installer in C++ to include
it directly in QGIS, but it would have some drawbacks (like absence of
zip decompression in Qt) and would add a lot of unneccessary work. So
binding the installer to plugin manager looks like a way to go - for
start we can just put a button "plugin installer" to the plugin
manager dialog.


> And one question. There are two branches in the QSettings:
>      Plugins/$PLUGIN_NAME        = bool
>      PythonPlugins/$PLUGIN_DIR   = bool
>
> What they mean? They don't correspond with actually enabled plugins at mine!

These values indicate whether a plugin is enabled or not. What doesn't
correspond in your case?

Bye
Martin