[QGIS-Developer] Can't find SAGA devel versions after r413c6e5

[Rainer Hurling]

Hi Alex,

thanks for reworking bigger parts of the processing SAGA provider! 
Really appreciated.

I am writing you as the maintainer of the ports of SAGA GIS and QGIS for 
the FreeBSD OS[1][2].

For some reasons, we don't package our system with different versions of 
SAGA GIS. Recent FreeBSD comes with SAGA GIS version 3.0.0, I am working 
on an update to version 4.1.0.

With your latest updates to QGIS (r413c6e5), newer versions of SAGA GIS 
than 2.3.x are not recognized any more :(

I am familiar with the background, that QGIS processing only garantees 
to work well with the SAGA GIS LTR version. But there was a kind of 
tacit agreement for several years now, that QGIS processing tools also 
accepted to display (and somewhat work with) newer SAGA GIS versions.

A user of QGIS, who had installed a more recent SAGA GIS version, worked 
on his own risk, and of course it was not garanteed to work flawlessly. 
But, nevertheless it worked for many cases.


Now my request: It would be fine and at least important for FreeBSD 
users, to have the possibility to use SAGA GIS > 2.3.x with QGIS 2.18.9 
again.

As far as I can see, getSagaInstalledVersion() within 
python/plugins/processing/algs/saga/SagaUtils.py does find the correct 
version, even if it is greater than 2.3.x (the trunk version in my case):

 >>> getSagaInstalledVersion()
'5.0.0'

findSagaFolder() gives nothing back, I think, this is one main cause for 
not displaying any SAGA GIS presence here.

Another reason could be, that line 76 in SagaAlgorithmProvider.py checks 
for 2.3. ('hardcoded'):

l76: if not version.startwith('2.3.'):

I would really appreciate any changes, that would make it possible again 
to work with newer SAGA GIS versions, even with devel versions.

Thanks for any hints and/or changes. Please let me know, if I could test 
something.

Best wishes,
Rainer Hurling


[1] http://www.freshports.org/graphics/qgis
[2] http://www.freshports.org/math/saga