[Qgis-developer] Borrowing QGIS plugin architecture for another application

[Josh Doe]

I apologize for the mostly off-topic nature of this, but I wasn't sure
where else to ask my question.

I'm thinking of borrowing the QGIS plugin architecture for an
application that I'm working on, particularly the parts that provide
for creating Python plugins. I use QGIS off and on for both hobby and
work use and from a user side I'm very pleased with the way plugins
work, but was curious if any of the developers had words of advice.
The plugin system seems largely unchanged for many years, so perhaps
there are some elements of the design that haven't changed in order to
limit API changes.

The only major limitation I can find so far is that plugin interdependency
doesn't seem to be supported, such that plugins cannot extend other
plugins. Of course I'm sure this could be done between Python plugins
easily, but I don't see any facility for this on the C++ side.

For the curious, this is for a video capture and analysis application
that is primarily intended to support the measurement of camera
properties. The core uses GStreamer for capture from many different
devices, Qt throughout, QPluginLoader for plugins, and several plugins
that use OpenCV as well as compiled MATLAB. I've released some
portions as open source, with the rest to come eventually.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

-Josh