[Qgis-developer] Shipping SAGA with QGIS

[William Kyngesburye]

On Feb 24, 2013, at 5:52 PM, Victor Olaya wrote:

> - In Mac, since there seems to be problems, I would let the user
> select the folder itself, and not infere anything from the system or
> assume any path. It seems that SAGA is not easy to install in Mac, so
> if someone can do it, probably he can configure SEXTANTE correctly.
> 
> Anyway, since I know absolutely zero about Mac OS and do not have a
> Mac to test, I would need someone to run some simple analysis in SAGA
> using saga_cmd and send it to me, so I can see exactly how to do it.
> That includes setting any environment variables (as it is done now for
> the Windows version), or any other thing that might be needed, so I
> can set it to run on Mac (or at least, try to...)


I looked at it today.  They have a good wiki page on compiling for OS X, and I got it compiled with minor tweaks.  Now that I understand how Saga is used in Sextante, and how Saga in installed, I think Saga could be bundled with QGIS.  The saga_cmd would be in the app package bin/ where it would be found automatically by QGIS, and the libraries in lib/.

If saga_cmd loads command libraries by relative path (ie ../lib/saga, as they are installed), this would work simply without any environment settings.

But if saga loads them by absolute path (ie the configured --prefix), and there is no env setting to set a different path, this would be bad since it would lock down the whole QGIS app to the build path (a Mac app should work if the user moves or renames it, though it is kindof discouraged since it confuses installers).  I could try an easy test outside of sextante/qgis by renaming my saga install folder and trying to run a simple command.

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

"The beast is actively interested only in now, and, as it is always now and always shall be, there is an eternity of time for the accomplishment of objects."

- the wisdom of Tarzan