[Qgis-developer] SEXTANTE backends

[Julien Malik]

Hi,

Does the Qgis plugin system support dependency between plugin ?


Now that there is (already !) a lot of backends integrated directly into 
the core plugin, I guess there will be more and more people proposing 
improvements. I think moving to a DVCS would help, so that people can 
"pull-request" you, with all the advantages of dvcs : lower down patch 
work for you, honor contributors in the code base by preserving 
authoring, help for work on more mid/long-term feature before 
integration into your reference repository, etc...
If my understanding is ok, the redmine instance can host a git 
repository, at the cost of two mouse clicks.
Victor, others, what's your opinion on this ?


About integration of the binaries, as discussed at the HF, I'm afraid 
this would be impossible to maintain. Probably even impossible to do at all.
It makes no sense on linux where the habit is to install software 
system-wide through the package manager.
My opinion is that it is a packager-related issue, and should not 
interfere with the plugin deployment.
Even for windows, a package can be a bit more than just a zip to unzip. 
You'll be reimplementing osgeo4w-setup inside your plugin if you take 
that road.

For windows, I see there is already a "qgis-grass-plugin" osgeo4w package.
Maybe there could be a qgis-sextante-providers package, sort of virtual 
package depending on all the necessary packages for sextante backends ? 
Then, if it proves usefull and stable enough, it could even be 
integrated in the standalone qgis installer so that people downloading 
qgis out of osgeo4w also can get saga/otb/... easily ?
Someone would need to step up to provide and maintain a saga osgeo4w 
package [1]. The rest of the current sextante backends are already packaged.
Such "sextante" virtual package is something which is doable on 
Debian-based distros (I don't know anything about non-Debian-based linux...)

Julien

[1] http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/ticket/273



Le 17/04/2012 13:56, Victor Olaya a écrit :
> that is a question that should be discussed.
>
> Algorihtm providers in SEXTANTE can be turned off, so I would prefer
> to have them all together, since the size is rather small, and to
> activate them within SEXTANTE.
>
> However, there is already a mechanism for creating plugins that
> connect their algorithms into SEXTANTE, for those who prefer to
> develop them outside of SEXTANTE and distribute them separately as
> well.
>
> As I said, in the case of small plugins, it should not be a problem to
> include them in SEXTANTE. The main issue I see is related to providers
> using external apps and how to distribute them. I think that this
> should also be discussed.
>
> For now, I will keep all the backends and algorithms that I develop in
> one single plugin along with the SEXTANTE core. If other developers
> want their algorithms also included there, just tell me. And if
> someone creates its own provider as an external plugin, it should be
> clearly stated that it requires SEXTANTE, so people can install it in
> advance and also can search for SEXTANTE-based plugins.