[QGIS-Developer] Reducing the size of our download packages

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Tim,

On Mon, 23. Mar 2026 at 09:20:16 +0000, Tim Sutton via QGIS-Developer wrote:
> Here in the infrastructure management club for QGIS we have been embarking
> on a plan to slowly divest ourselves of 'big tech'.

Sidenote: The MSIs weren't relying on big tech.  The download came from
OSUOSL's and OSGeo's download servers and norbit.de - with download.qgis.org
randomly redirecting to one of the three.

> We are wondering if the datum shift files could be split out from the main
> installer and fetched as an optional extra? Or maybe on demand as you need
> them? We could set up some infrastructure for hosting them, but we would
> need some help on the application side to implement logic to go and grab
> shift files that are not locally cached. Is anyone able to help with this?

The dependency of proj to proj-data was dropped in OSGeo4W (which is what
brought proj-data into the installer) and a new package was introduced called
qgis-full-grids, that depends on qgis-full (which is what the default installer
packages) and proj-data.

qgis-full also includes proprietary extensions (oracle, sql server, ecw, mrsid,
filegdb and hdf5), so basing the "lean" installer on qgis-full-free would be an
option too and would make it even smaller (but may force people to download the
"fat" package).

The idea is to create MSIs for qgis-full as usual (but now without the grids)
and qgis-full-grids including the grids and make both available.

The MSIs also ship the OSGeo4W installer so installing proj-data afterwards
would still be possible (although that requires admin rights like the MSI).

BTW the MSIs are currently signed with an expired certificate - OSGeo (ie.
Mike Smith) renewed the certificate, but it's somehow tied to a hardware key
now and Mike is still figuring out how to get if off there to make it
available.


Jürgen

-- 
Jürgen E. Fischer           norBIT GmbH             Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
Dipl.-Inf. (FH)             Rheinstraße 13          Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
Software Engineer           D-26506 Norden            https://www.norbit.de
QGIS release manager (PSC)  Germany                  Matrix: @jef:osgeo.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/attachments/20260324/6ec98d56/attachment.sig>