[Qgis-developer] Advice on VRP plugin development

[cremat0rio]

Hi all!

I would like to create a QGis plugin to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem
(VRP) using Evolutionary Computation techniques (Genetic Algorithms and
stuff like that).
I have some initial questions, so if someone can help-me, I'll appreciate it
very much.

1. What programming language should i use? I know that there's the
possibility to create plugins in Python or C++, but the Python Plugin
Installer, as the name states, can only be used for python plugins.
The problem of using python is about speed/performance, because VRP is a
very hard problem, especially when is solved using Evolutionary Computation
techniques.
There seems that i have 3 options:
a) Do all the work in python, using some libraries to speed up the thing
(like scipy).
b) Build the interface in python and the core library in C++. I don't know
if python and C++ can integrate well. I don't know either if this can be
done, because C++ has to be compiled for the client machine (that can be
windows, linux, ...)
c) Build the interface in python and the core library in java. I don't know
if python and java can integrate well too, but java can run in almost every
platform and is fast.

2. For the plugin to work, i need to find the shortest path between any two
points on a POINT layer, using a LINESTRING layer for the road network. In
the new QGis development version there's a plugin/tool named "shortest
path". Can i use it to calculate this distances from a python plugin?

Any help or advice is very appreciated.
David Pinheiro 

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