[QGIS-Developer] Find unmaintained plugins

Sun Feb 3 06:27:46 PST 2019

Hi Paolo,
if I understand well, your reply implicitely highlights several topics.

Plugins are plug-ins, they are supposed to serve as an integration of
specialised functions that are too specific to become part of the main
program. This in theory; sometimes they are a temporary solution for a more
general audience, sometimes they propose an alternative solution for
something that is already in QGIS.
I think this should be clear to users, what category the plugin belongs to,
and one of the most important enhancements to the present situation is
adding this information to the list. Then it should be clear since what
version the functionality provided by a plugin has been added to the QGIS,
so the plugin should not be installed unless the user is so fond of the
provided workaround to prefer the plugin to the solution adopted by QGIS
(it happens!).

The second item is about categorisation of plugins. They are many more than
anyone would expect when the plugins were introduced. Alphabetical order is
not anymore a solution when you have several hundred plugins (there should
be a psycological rule written about this somewhere, please fill in if you
know ;.)), we should find out categories and attribute plugins to these
categories. When a developer wants to do something about any issue which is
already tackled by one of more plugins (it's frequent, I see), he should
also provide information about what plugins become obsolete. It's not a
good idea to "vote for obsolescence".

The third item is about automation. Github has some experience about how to
evaluate source code, I think we should bring the data that Zoltan shows
for the plugin he evaluated in the list, adding how many bugs were found,
closed or stay open since when, suggesting that some plugins should be
subject to further investigation. This is the area for human intervention.
Some warning can be automated, but it would be better to provide a
responsible feedback. Some developer feel more responsible for certain
subject, I think that categorising plugins helps developers to keep an eye
on plugins that are relevant for everyone's area of experience.

Over all, I think that the work you do about administrative and technical
approval (thank you very much for your attention and even for your
occasional failures) could be balanced by Anita Graser who has frequently
focused on some interesting plugins. This is another important issue about
documentation. There should be a comprehensive description of what plugins
do. Having a simple list, even a categorised list, is not enough. Some
plugins – DbManager comes immediately to my mind – are even more important
for me and for others than many features of the main program.

Sorry for being so verbose, but all the work done on plugins so far
deserves great attention.
c

On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 1:45 PM Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>
wrote:

> Hi Siki,
>
> On 03/02/19 10:54, Siki Zoltan wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > there should be some mechanism to overtake a plugin.
> > For example the qgsaffine plugin [1], the last commit was in 2015 on
> > github and there is a pull request [2] (more than one month old) which
> > upgrades plugin to qgis 3.4.
> > Deadlock...
> >
> > Zoltan
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/eriktim/qgsAffine
> > [2] https://github.com/eriktim/qgsAffine/pulls
>
> the plugin manager can change the author email and name. of course it
> would be good to have the original author's assent, but I realize that
> this is not always possible.
> Perhaps this should only be made more clear and visible to power users.
> What do you suggest?
> Cheers.
> --
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS.ORG Chair:
> http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/
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