[Qgis-developer] Future of the Globe plugin in QGIS 3 with Qt5

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

As discussed in #15536 [0], osgEarth 2.8 has been released and requires
OpenSceneGraph 3.4. The Debian packages for OSG 3.4 have switched to Qt5
as has the Debian packaging for osgEarth 2.8.

Unfortunately the Globe plugin only supports osgEarth 2.7 in QGIS 2.16
(which both still use Qt4). And I've not been able to get an answer from
Pirmin about the plans for the Globe plugin in QGIS 3 which will use Qt5.

Currently most packages that depend on OpenSceneGraph in Debian use the
OpenSceneGraph 3.2 packages, and those will remain available in the next
Debian stable release (stretch). The OpenSceneGraph maintainers have now
also move the OpenSceneGraph 3.4 packages to unstable to have it
available alongside the 3.2 packages in stretch. [1]

Because the QGIS 2.14 LTR packages in Debian lack support for osgEarth
2.7 in the Globe plugin, there is no need to keep the osgEarth package
at version 2.7, it's only used by the upstream QGIS 2.16 packages.

I'm considering moving the osgEarth 2.8 packages from experimental to
unstable for inclusion in stretch, hoping that support for it will be
added as part of the move to Qt5 in QGIS 3. Although based on my
questions in the Redmine issue not being answered and prior experience
with time needed to get support for osgEarth 2.7 in QGIS, I'm not seeing
a bright future for the Globe plugin in QGIS 3 with Qt5 expecting it to
be disabled for a long time until support for osgEarth 2.8 or later is
added.

If there is sufficient demand to keep osgEarth 2.7 in stretch for the
sake of upstream users of the QGIS 2.x packages, I'm willing to keep the
osgEarth 2.8 packages in experimental until stretch is released.
Otherwise I'll move the osgEarth 2.8 packages to unstable for inclusion
in stretch, breaking the Globe plugin in the upstream QGIS 2.16 packages.

Please share your thoughts about the future of the Globe plugin in QGIS
3 with Qt5.

[0] https://hub.qgis.org/issues/15536
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-gis/2016/09/msg00022.html

Kind Regards,

Bas

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