[Qgis-developer] A plea for plugin authors

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi all.
I would like to ask our plugin authors to take special care and
attention to the following:

Metadata
========

* avoid using a name too similar to existing plugins
* if your plugin has a similar functionality to an existing plugin,
please explain the differences in the About field, so the user will know
which one to use without the need to install and test it
* avoid repeating "plugin" in the name of the plugin itself
* use the description field in metadata for a 1 line description, the
About field for more detailed instructions
* include a code repository, a bug tracker, and a home page; this will
greatly enhance the possibility of collaboration, and can be done very
easily with one of the available web infrastructures (GitHub, GitLab,
Bitbucket, etc.)
* choose tags with care: avoid the uninformative ones (e.g. vector) and
prefer the ones already used by others (see [1])
* add a proper icon, do not leave the default one; see QGIS interface
for a suggestion of the style to be used

Code and help
=============

* do not include generated file (ui_*.py, resources_rc.py, generated
help files…) and useless stuff (e.g. .gitignore) in repository
* add the plugin to the appropriate menu (Vector, Raster, Web, Database)
* when appropriate (plugins performing analyses), consider adding the
plugin as a subplugin of Processing framework: this will allow users to
run it in batch, to integrate it in more complex workflows, and will
free you from the burden of designing an interface; a good example of
this move is LecoS[0]
* has at least minimal documentation and, if useful for testing and
understanding, sample data.

Further info at [2].

Please write if you need further help.
All the best.

[0]
https://conservationecology.wordpress.com/qgis-plugins-and-scripts/lecos-land-cover-statistics/
[1] http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/
[2] http://plugins.qgis.org/
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html