[Qgis-developer] The new QGIS plugin repo

[Borys Jurgiel]

Dnia poniedziałek, 28 czerwca 2010 o 00:50:42 Carson Farmer napisał(a):
> > From this point, qgis will use the new repository (if we keep the url on
> > pyqgis.org) and the author repositories will be redundant. When only most
> > authors move to the svn, I'll release the Installer update with shortened
> > plugin list. Necessary strings went to i18n files already.
> 
> Whoa! I guess I must have missed the discussion on this, but I'm not
> so sure that requiring all plugin authors to move their plugins to a
> central svn repository is a good idea. I think this will stifle the
> number of authors who actually release their plugins to the public, as
> many companies and organisations require that their derivative works
> remain on their own servers (often so they can easily keep track of
> downloads etc.). Is it too late to (re)open discussion on this topic
> (apologies for not following more closely to start with)?
> 
> I would strongly oppose a complete move to a central svn repository. I
> understand the benefits to such a system, and for many authors this
> will be an ideal solution, however, I don't think it is ideal for all
> authors, and in the cases where it is not, I think it will become a
> barrier to entry. Will there be other options (i.e. something similar
> to the current setup, where plugin authors can host plugins on their
> own servers)? Perhaps I am confused, and this only applied to the
> official qgis repositories, and if so I apologise for the confusion.

You will still be able to add an external repository of course, however I'm 
going to completely drop the "Add known 3rd party repositories" button. So 
adding an external repository will be completely on your own and we will take 
no responsibility on it. The reason is still growing number of problems:

- fetching repositories take more and more time
- it happens every few days that one of the repos is down
- it happens every two weeks that a zip package and/or metadata is broken (I 
must admit this problem is bigger in the cental repository, but used to happen 
everywhere)
- we have no possibility to immediately disable an invalid plugin until a 
problem is fixed.

In Vienna we were talking about a proxy to author repositories, but seems 
nobody has time to develop so huge application (It would need to unpack zip 
packages to load the modules and rebuild metadata etc). So I like the Paolo's 
idea to create a more friendly and powerful solution on the pyqgis.org to 
attract more authors.

Anyway, we can just move the present central repositories to the svn solution 
in the first step and then try to encourage owners of external repositories to 
join. Even the first step would be a great improvement.

B.