[Qgis-developer] Plugins meeting

[Paolo Cavallini]

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Hi all.
A report on the meeting about Python plugins we just had:

* the new installer by Borys looks quite nice and it is certainly an
improvement over the existing one; hopefully it will be ready soon,
for possible inclusion on 2.0
* after API freeze, we suggest writing all plugin authors and
maintainers (Alessandro is preparing the list) calling for upgrade, in
order to have them functional again
* we suggest to give a reasonable delay for the fix; after that, we
can decide either to leave them as they are (in this case they will no
longer be installable in version 2.0), or to have a Py maintainer to
fix them; I'm personally in favour of this second option
* we cannot find back the rules we currently use for plugin approval
after submission; they should be put in Governance documents, and
linked both in the Py Cookbook and in the Plugins webapp
* the Deprecated tag is already implemented; it is probably advisable
not to list the deprecated plugins in the XML, so they will be left on
the site, for future reference, but not installable from QGIS; this is
a trivial change to do in  the webapp
* we suggest the plugin maintainer should be responsible for checking
the plugin on submission, approve it if suitable, and add the
Deprecated tag when appropriate
* in the metadata of the plugin we also have a category (Raster,
Vector, Database, and Web), but it is not used; we suggest to
implement a method to add plugins to the appropriate menu, if not
already done in code; this will make life easier for the authors, and
interface more readable for the users
* of 216 plugins available on the new repo, 64 have no code repository
nor bugtracker; 52 also no home page; currently these are not
mandatory; it should be discussed whether to make it so; my personal
opinion is that the desired behaviour is making repo+bugtracker
mandatory, and if the author do not define the, the webapp itself
should create them automatically
* we have 74 plugins in the old repos which have not been migrated to
the new one; I'm sending a more detailed report on these.

The general idea is that plugins are now a crucial part of the QGIS
experience for the users, and we cannot treat them as completely
disconnected from the main project, but we should take some
responsibility for them.

Comments most welcome.

All the best.
- -- 
Paolo Cavallini - Faunalia
www.faunalia.eu
Full contact details at www.faunalia.eu/pc
Nuovi corsi QGIS e PostGIS: http://www.faunalia.it/calendario
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