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

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 09/28/2016 02:28 PM, Sandro Mani wrote:
> I've had a look recently at adding osgEarth 2.8 support (and produced a
> tentative patch [1]), however the rendering is completely broken. I've
> not had time to investigate yet, but it looks like osgEarth2.8 puts a
> hard minimum requirement on GLSL 3.30, i.e. debug log output:
> 
> FRAGMENT glCompileShader "main(fragment)" FAILED
> FRAGMENT Shader "main(fragment)" infolog:
> 0:1(10): error: the compatibility profile is not supported
> 0:1(10): error: GLSL 3.30 is not supported. Supported versions are:
> 1.10, 1.20, 1.30, 1.00 ES, and 3.00 ES
> 
> This makes me uncomfortable: I'm pretty sure many users running somewhat
> older distros or older hardware will hit this. So upgrading to osgEarth
> 2.8 just for the sake of upgrading and braking the globe for many user
> is in my view not the best of plans.

To me that just sounds like a normal price for progress.

> Technically nothing speaks against building osgEarth2.7 against Qt5 (for
> clarity: osgEarth 2.7 supports Qt5 alread) and keeping that version
> packaged for the forseable future.
> 
> Alternatively, distros wanting to upgrade could keep osgEarth 2.7
> packaged as osgEarth27 and renaming library names (i.e. libosgEarthXXX
> -> libosgEarth27XXX) and the header dirs. Up to this point it would be
> fairly easy, the problem comes with osgPlugins - I'm not sure if it is
> possible to install multiple versions simultaneously in
> /usr/lib64/osgPlugins-3.4.0/ or similar.

Unless someone volunteers to maintain a separate source package for
osgEarth 2.7 in Debian, only a single version will be in Debian (the
latest). Unlike the OpenSceneGraph maintainers I'm not willing to
maintain two co-installable osgEarth versions in a stable release.

> Happy to hear other suggestions.

Since the Globe plugin is not very actively developed, and takes a lot
of time before it's adapted to new osgEarth versions, consider it not
appropriate to keep as a core plugin and move it out of the qgis tree.

> Best
> Sandro
> 
> [1] https://smani.fedorapeople.org/osgEarth28.patch
> 
> 
> On 28.09.2016 13:40, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
>> 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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