[Qgis-developer] Core Python plugins and their dependencies

[Alexander Bruy]

Hi all,

do we have any policy about dependencies of core Python plugins?
Current situation
is a bit messy and confusing.

DB Manager depends on psycopg2 and pyspatialite, but we does not ship this
packages into QGIS source tree. Same for Processing, it contains several
algorithms that require matplotlib and we does not bundle matplotlib in QGIS
source tree. And it is fine, as user can easily install this packages
using package
manager or pip.

On other hand MetaSearch adds 7.4 Mb of dependecies to QGIS sources, while
in most Linux distributions this packages available from repositories
or from PyPI.
Even under Windows this packages present in OSGeo4W installer.

I think it would be good to have clear policy on this. Personally I
think that we
should avoid including Python dependencies in QGIS sources and if plugin
requires some 3rd party libs, we can make it disabled by default ot
even optional (so it will be "compiled" and installed only if all
necessary dependencies already available).

Opinions?

-- 
Alexander Bruy