[QGIS-Developer] SAGA GIS plugin maintenance

Mon May 25 15:09:34 PDT 2026

On Tue, 26 May 2026 at 02:25, Rainer Hurling <rhurlin at gwdg.de> wrote:

> Dear QGIS devs,
> I am writing to you on behalf of the small group of SAGA GIS developers.
> This thread has raised several points and perspectives that are of great
> interest to us, and we would like to share the SAGA team’s perspective
> on them.
>
> However, before we contribute here, we would like to discuss this at our
> regular developer meeting next Friday (May 29). We have already added
> the topic to the agenda :)
> After that, we will post here in the thread and try to outline our options.
>
> @Nyall: Could you please make the “SAGA Processing Nextgen” plugin,
> which is currently set to “private”, public again for a while? I’d like
> to fork it, thanks!
>

Done! Can you let me know when you've forked so that I can revert to
private again?

Thanks,
Nyall

>
> Best wishes,
> Rainer  (FreeBSD ports committer)
>
>
> Am 22.05.26 um 01:55 schrieb Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer:
> > On Thu, 21 May 2026 at 19:53, Stefano Campus via QGIS-Developer <qgis-
> > developer at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>>
> wrote:
> >
> >  > I’m writing to the dev list because I think this issue is of interest.
> >  >
> >  > For the past few days, the SAGA Next plugin—which allows you to use
> > SAGA GIS modules within QGIS Processing—has been unavailable.
> >
> > Thanks for kicking off this discussion -- I've been waiting for someone
> > to raise it 😁🍿
> >
> > To explain the situation:
> >
> > I've been "maintaining" that plugin for years. That's an over-
> > exaggeration... it hasn't received any love from me beyond reviewing a
> > pull request once every couple of years. I initially forked it (SAGA
> > NextGen) from the core SAGA plugin back in 2019 to help solve issues
> > with SAGA availability of LTR releases and broken stable API. Then in
> > 2019 https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/230
> > <https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/230>
> > followed, when the built-in SAGA plugin was removed and it went from
> > being an out-of-the-box, "qgis.org <http://qgis.org> maintained" plugin
> > to relying on the third party SAGA NextGen "community maintained"
> > plugin. That's 100% because it was concluded by all the developers
> > responsible for that code that it wasn't up to the quality standards of
> > the rest of QGIS.
> >
> > It was always a fragile mess of a plugin. Part of that was because of
> > the difficulties associated with SAGA versioning, part of that was
> > because it was initially forked from old python code that no-one had
> > ever modernised. To say it was held together with chewing gum would be a
> > lie... it was held together with some soggy wet toilet paper at
> > best! 😆 This really bugged me. I'd see constant user frustration
> > because it never worked well, and IMO this user frustration was harming
> > the reputation of QGIS itself. It didn't help that I'd keep reading
> > blogs/guides/tutorials where people were recommending using it for
> > operations where QGIS native tools are SOOOO much better (eg vector
> > operations like buffering).
> >
> > It was never my desire to become the maintainer of the plugin and put in
> > the work required to bring it up to the quality standard I hold to,
> > rather, I offered it on an initially voluntary basis to fix immediate
> > issues I saw users were experiencing and with the hope that making it a
> > third party plugin would help grow a healthy community that would take
> > it over.
> >
> > That never happened... Instead it was just another burden that I carried
> > for everyone, with the associated lack of thanks and lack of any
> > recognition beyond angry emails when it didn't work. 🤷. Ah well, that's
> > just life as a QGIS developer, we all deal with that, and I'm thick-
> > skinned enough to handle it!
> >
> > At least, I thought so. Then the AI apocalypse hit in 2026.
> >
> > As a response to my frustration with the lack of support the user
> > community is giving to open-source developers during this INCREDIBLY
> > challenging time, I decided to close off a bunch of my public
> > repositories. Because, hey, I don't want to directly train the
> > technologies that will likely destroy the whole economics behind open-
> > source software development. So I closed off repositories for things I'd
> > voluntarily made public, including dropping any QGIS plugin that I
> > wasn't directly using myself anymore, and that wasn't funded or in use
> > by my customers (or where a better native tool now exists). And that
> > included the SAGA NextGen plugin. I have no use for it, and none of my
> > customers use it, and it's a PITA to "maintain".
> >
> > I knew that by doing so I'd be stirring up trouble, and honestly, that
> > was partly my intention! I wanted to force a discussion about this, and
> > raise widespread attention to the issues that would otherwise go
> > unnoticed. It's the SAGA plugin today, but tomorrow it could easily be
> > QGIS itself, or GDAL, or PostGIS, or PDAL, or ... 😱
> >
> > My personal preference would be that we continue to port useful tools
> > from SAGA to native QGIS versions of these tools. I've done this in the
> > past (see https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/53794 <https://github.com/
> > qgis/QGIS/pull/53794>, https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/61722 <https://
> > github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/61722>) for tools that I need myself, or that
> > my customers rely on, and the QGIS native tools are so much better
> > (***FOR QGIS USERS***) then calling out to the SAGA versions. They have
> > full format support for all the data sources QGIS supports, they work
> > with massive rasters without memory issues, and they are much faster as
> > they don't require data conversion to intermediate formats. And on top
> > of that, they "just work" everywhere QGIS works -- there's no fussing
> > around with SAGA version compatibility, and no security risks with
> > python code shelling out to run random batch files.
> >
> > (Please understand that I'm not insulting the SAGA developers or their
> > versions of these tools here... in my experience the SAGA developer's
> > logic is great, the code is well written and the algorithms themselves
> > are well designed. It's a testament to the SAGA developers how easy it
> > is to port the tools to QGIS, they are very readable and well
> > documented. My point is that we offer a better experience to **QGIS**
> > users by porting the tools to native equivalents using QGIS API
> directly).
> >
> > If anyone has particular SAGA tools they rely on for their work, then
> > please reach out and I'll let you know how much it would cost to sponsor
> > a port of that tool.
> >
> > Finally, please note that I didn't delete the plugin repository, I just
> > made it private instead of public. I'm happy to temporarily make it
> > public again if someone wants to fork it, but after they do that I'll
> > then permanently erase my repo. If someone wants to do this then let me
> > know and I'll re-open temporarily.
> >
> > Nyall
> >
> >
> >  >
> >  > According to reports in the QGIS community’s Telegram group,
> > maintaining this plugin is becoming increasingly difficult due to
> > developments in the SAGA project, which can cause the plugin to stop
> > working.
> >  >
> >  > I recall that until a couple of years ago, SAGA was, like GRASS, a
> > resource installed directly within QGIS, but then, precisely because of
> > the difficulty in keeping up with SAGA’s developments, it was decided to
> > treat SAGA as a third-party resource accessible via plugins.
> >  >
> >  > I believe it is right that this important resource should not be
> > maintained on a voluntary basis by a single developer/user, but that it
> > should be taken on by the community.
> >  >
> >  > Do you think it would be a good idea to propose to the Steering Group
> > that its maintenance be taken on directly by the QGIS.org Foundation and
> > that a certain sum (1000–2000 euros?) be set aside in the annual budget
> > for its maintenance?
> >  >
> >  > Thank you
> >  >
> >  > stefano campus
> >  >
> >  > _______________________________________________
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> >
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