[QGIS-Developer] SAGA GIS plugin maintenance
Rainer Hurling
rhurlin at gwdg.de
Tue May 26 08:54:08 PDT 2026
Hi Nyall,
Am 26.05.26 um 00:09 schrieb Nyall Dawson:
>
>
> On Tue, 26 May 2026 at 02:25, Rainer Hurling <rhurlin at gwdg.de
> <mailto: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?
Done, too!
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to fork your plugin
before it is no longer accessible to the public. It can now be set to
“Private” again :)
Rainer
(FreeBSD Committer, rhurlin at FreeBSD.org)
> 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:developer at lists.osgeo.org>
> <mailto: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>
> > <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> <http://
> 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/ <https://
> github.com/>
> > qgis/QGIS/pull/53794>, https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/61722
> <https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/61722> <https://
> > github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/61722 <http://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
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > QGIS-Developer mailing list
> > > QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:QGIS-
> Developer at lists.osgeo.org> <mailto:QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org
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