[Qgis-developer] QGIS plugin repo [was: Value Tool]

[Borys Jurgiel]

> Hi all.
> This brings another, more general question: how are going to deal with
> plugins? We have a number of them that, even if they're not official, are
> so useful and widely used we cannot afford missing. It has already
> happened several times now (and many more times will happen in the future)
> that someone can and wants to improve someone else's plugin, provide a
> patch, or simply to notify a bug.

It happens quite often, so the svn could be really big convenience! Also a 
possibility to assign "many to many" devs to plugins is often requested (now I 
have to totally change the ownership of abandoned plugins). The third priority 
is automatic zip packaging and metadata generation, as such human mistakes 
happens every one month.

svn + the publishing script + trac seems to be the solution for all major 
problems. It's simple, convenient, powerful and flexible. It doesn't break the 
existing plugin system and opens a way to painlessly introduce new features 
(as keywords, categories, screenshots) to all plugins at once by an admin. It 
even allows to create automatic changelogs for plugins that don't contain 
them. Trac support can be even implemented in the installer for easier bug 
reporting. In one world - it's exactly what we need.

> The only additional work for the admins would therefore be to grant
> selective access to the addons to interested devs, but that's not too bad
> (and I can help if nobody else has the time to do it). Of course any
> additional help is warmly welcomed. Please let me know your feelings about
> this proposal.

No problem for me, it's much more convenient that the present juggling with 
zip files :) It's a shame on me, that I still have no time for improving this 
system.

There's also one more important question. In Vienna we talked about making the  
repository a proxy to another ones. The main reasons were:
- performance: only one http request for fetching all metadata
- safety: possibility to lock broken/malicious plugin
- quality: on-the-fly testing of the zip package and metadata consistency 

Now, with the trac, I wonder if author's repositories are necessary at all? 
What about asking all authors for moving all their public plugins to the main 
svn? There will be still the possibility to add an external repo for e.g. 
internal purposes, but there will be no list of known 3rd party repos any 
more. What do you think?

B.