[Qgis-developer] Broken models with processing (i.e we shouldn't be doing that)

[Nathan Woodrow]

Hi all,

I have noticed that old models don't work in the new processing modeler.
This is really, really bad. Breaking a format is just as bad, or even
worse, as breaking a API. Users don't care (much) for APIs but they care
about formats and when they stop working people get annoyed.

Processing is a core plugin and therefore people consider it part of QGIS,
changes in it effect us as a whole product.  If I break one of my plugins
that hurts me, if I change a core format (e.g qgs, qlr) that hurts the
whole QGIS project.

I can understand the need to move forward to something better, and the new
JSON format is much better then a custom format I will never argue for the
later. However not providing a way to import old models, or even doing it
by auto magic, is really bad.

Some people invest a lot of time into creating models for processing and
having it break under them with no option but to recreate will leave a bad
taste with people, trust me on that.   As processing has been "core" since
2.0 you can expect a lot of models in the wild and a lot of annoyed people
if there is no option to upgrade.

What I am NOT proposing is to revert that work, we do need to move forward
but I do think there needs to be a conversion function/s.

However if it comes close to release and there is no conversion ability
then I would say we should revert the plugin in core and wait for the next
release to upgrade the models.  Breaking the models on people with no
convert option will have much more effect then not having some of the new
features.

Regards,
Nathan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/attachments/20140811/4d7c0682/attachment.html>