[QGIS-Developer] Copy layer vs Duplicate layer ???

[chris hermansen]

Richard and list,


On Wed, Jun 4, 2025, 08:00 Richard Duivenvoorde via QGIS-Developer <
qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi People,
>
> A user had an issue in which she 'copied' a layer, edited it and then
> found out she edited the original data...
>
> My response was: yes (join the club ;-)) it is called 'duplicate', but it
> only duplicates the layer, NOT the data.
>
> Then she responded: but I did not use 'duplicate', I used 'copy layer' ...
>
> Then I found out they indeed both exist in the context menu, and actually
> do the same thing... ???
> (tested with a gpkg and a shapefile)
>
> So my questions:
> - should there be 2 context menu items for the same thing (the always
> tricky 'duplicate' which (in my view) counter-intuitive does not duplicate
> data)
> - should these 2 functions not behave different?
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Duivenvoorde
>

(Without a working QGIS for now as I await the latest release for Ubuntu
25.04, so I cannot confirm my comments below with testing...)

>
It's my recollection that I too have fallen for the same false solution to
my problem.

I think my current approach is to "save as..." and have the saved copy show
up as a new layer; is that what most people do when they want to creat a
copy of a layer for editing?

>From that perspective, why not just get rid of both the "duplicate" and
"copy" layers since (if I am not wrong) one can equally just open the same
data set as a new layer?

It doesn't seem that we benefit much by those and apparently some of us
have found them distracting...
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