[Qgis-developer] PyQGIS Dev Lib plugin idea

[Martin Dobias]

Hi Larry

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Larry Shaffer <larrys at dakotacarto.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have an idea that I am not sure has been discussed before:
>
> How about a core, or install-able, plugin that consists of reusable
> Python functions and subclass-able PyQt widgets?
>
> I envision this plugin containing community-submitted functions and
> classes that any Python plugin dev can call or instantiate from their
> plugin. This would help plugin devs from reinventing the wheel for
> many common tasks, offer reusable custom or common widgets, and
> possibly standardize some user interface widgets across plugins.

To me it seems that qgis_gui library would be the best fit for such
classes since it is supposed to be a library of reusable GUI stuff.
But I understand that for many people c++ is not an option.


> Submitting code to such a dev lib plugin should have some oversight,
> like submitting to the official plugin repository. All submitted code
> might be required to have a supplied unit test (or at least a doctest)
> and translatable strings. There should probably be noted minimum QGIS,
> Python, PyQt or Qt versions and imported modules required to use the
> code.

You could try to start such a project - create a dev lib plugin,
create a repository, add some useful widgets... soon you should see if
there is interest or not. Obviously requiring another plugin will be a
burden, so another possibility would be that the dev lib would be a
python package inside a plugin (that would demo the functionality) and
other developers would just copy the whole package to their plugins
(or just some bits from it).

Such dev lib could work also as an incubator for widgets - some
widgets that prove to be useful may be picked by core team and ported
to qgis_gui library (with python bindings).

Cheers
Martin