[Qgis-developer] Merging of incompatible changes

[Alister Hood]

> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:48:30 +0900
> From: Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>
> To: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] Merging of incompatible changes
> Message-ID: <5088703E.3070506 at faunalia.it>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Il 25/10/2012 05:39, Pirmin Kalberer ha scritto:
> > We did decide filling the missing gaps to fully replace old
> > symbology and old labelling (Paolo: Kickstarter pledge on the way?) and
> > polishing the many new features already integrated.
> Sorry, no progress on this. I've asked for some feedback and help, got
> none. Very little time now, planning to do it ASAP. Any help welcome.
> > plugins. It will take years to bring them all in sync with QGIS again.
> I understand both Pirmin and Martin concerns. I think seriously breaking
> the API and all the plugins will be good *if* we have a serious plan on
> how to migrate the plugins. At this stage, we cannot afford releasing a
> 2.0 without plugins, as nobody will use it, and we'll get stuck in the
> middle of the transition. This had proved to be a major problem for many
> software, sometimes effectively killing it, and we should really
> seriously avoid them.
> I think it is realistic, on the basis of the response to the request to
> move plugins to the new infrastructure, to assume that many developers
> will not do the migration in time: are we willing and capable of
> upgrading them ourselves, or do we plan to leave them as such?

When is "on time"?
Is it "before 2.0 is released"?
When people use software like Firefox they are accustomed to a lot of extensions becoming "incompatible" if they upgrade to a new version when it is released.  In that case there is seldom any real benefit associated with the upgrade.  But the threading is a major performance improvement, which is worth breaking compatibility isn't it?  And people have been eagerly anticipating it for years already...

Would you assume that most of those developers who have migrated their plugins to the new infrastructure will also update them for API changes?
Wouldn't that mean there isn't much of a problem, because whichever plugins won't be updated aren't available to users in the repository, anyway? ;)

Or has someone now migrated a significant number of unmaintained plugins to the new infrastructure?  If so, how many?