[Qgis-developer] Modifications to dissolve() in fTools

[Larry Shaffer]

Paolo,

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 12:14 AM, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> Il 15/06/2012 00:11, Eliott coyac ha scritto:
>
>> I've made several changes to dissolve, but since I'm new on this list and I don't
>
> Dear Eliott,
> thanks for this. Your work arrive at an unfortunate time, as it is probably too late
> to include it in the upcoming QGIS 1.8, whereas it would have been nice to have your
> fix in it.
> Could you please issue a pull request, so your patch can be easily included in master?

Recently, fTools (in master) had its version incremented up to 0.6.2,
to make sure it was higher than a version users might have installed
in their user-plugins directory. That helps users clean out their
versions of a user plugin that might be masking one in core, since
user plugins take precedence over a core one of the same package name.

The opposite makes for a good incremental update process between QGIS
releases. If fTools is put in the plugins.qgis.org repository, with
Eliott's tested changes, and incremented to version 0.6.3, users would
be notified of the update and can install the new version in their
user plugins directory.

This means that the plugin/version in master needs to be the same as
what's in the repository. Then, just before next release of QGIS, the
core plugin's version is bumped up again, and fTools at
plugins.qgis.org is removed or hidden from queries.

So, there is a means to get Elliot's work out to users, after 1.8
launch, after it has been tested. I suggest this type of update
process be standardized and/or written about somewhere in the
developer docs. It would aid developers who help maintain a core
plugin to push out fixes in between QGIS releases.

Another solution might be to have a small, separate plugin repository
that is transparently checked by Plugin Installer for incremental
updates to core plugins, instead of having core plugins repeatedly
listed and removed from plugins.qgis.org.

Regards,

Larry Shaffer
Dakota Cartography
Black Hills, South Dakota