[QGIS-Developer] Time for db manager to become an "opt-in" plugin?

[Nyall Dawson]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 at 16:47, Alessandro Pasotti <apasotti at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am +1 (of course).
>
> Another notable feature gap is virtual layers.

What's the gap there? Can't that all be done from the "New Virtual
Layer" dialog?

Nyall

>
> Kind regards.
>
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 2:43 AM Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer
> <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi list,
> >
> > I wanted to raise the discussion around potentially demoting the DB Manager plugin to become an opt-in, not installed by default plugin available from the QGIS plugin repository only.
> >
> > It's likely no surprise to anyone on this list, but there's been a multi-year effort (mostly thanks to Alessandro!) to move all the important functionality of db manager over to the QGIS browser. This was driven by a number of factors:
> >
> > - It was confusing and messy to expose database management tools through two completely separate parts of the QGIS interface
> > - The DB Manager tools are written in provider-specific ways, and don't use generic QGIS database/provider API calls. As a result there's a lot of duplicate code there, and db manager doesn't gain the benefits of new data provider features. (E.g. only a subset of the databases supported by QGIS and the browser management tools are available for management in db manager)
> > - The DB Manager functionality wasn't available for other parts of QGIS/plugins/scripts/etc to reuse, whereas the browser functionality is all nicely exposed to PyQGIS and is used by other parts of QGIS, eg. processing tools.
> > - The Python code implementing db manager is fragile, and is subject to semi-frequent regressions/breakage (through no fault of the authors -- it's just the nature of complex python applications which aren't soaked in unit tests)
> >
> > I'd say we've reached a stage where the browser now offers all the common functionality also available in db manager, and we can start to seriously discuss the future of the plugin.
> >
> > My personal view is that we should demote the plugin to a community-maintained, non-officially supported plugin available only through the QGIS plugin repositories, and remove it from the default QGIS install.
> >
> > Thoughts/discussion welcome :)
> >
> > Nyall
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
> --
> Alessandro Pasotti
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