[QGIS-Developer] Fwd: GRASS in QGIS

[Stefan Keller]

Please allow me to comment on this for the attention of those involved.
While I am not a QGIS C++ developer, I have developed over half a
dozen Python plugins and teach QGIS to users who mostly use Windows.
I use GRASS r.sun in a project (and the original GRASS docs
was good) and value it for specialized analyses, particularly in the
fields of scientific computing like photovoltaics and hydrology.

However, I have a request, primarily for the QGIS maintainers: GRASS
should be a separate plugin that isn’t installed by default, as is
currently the case at least on Windows. GRASS doubles the size of the
QGIS distribution and installation, which, in my opinion, makes QGIS
unnecessarily "heavy" for the majority of QGIS users.

--Stefan

Am Do., 8. Okt. 2026 um 06:04 Uhr schrieb DelazJ via QGIS-Developer
<qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>:
>
> Hi devs,
> We are currently updating the GRASS chapter in QGIS docs [1], a chapter left untouched for more than a decade, and we would have some questions:
>
> 1- Can someone remind us why the "GRASS 8" plugin in the Plugins Manager is labeled as deprecated? What are the actual plans? Afaict there are lots of features not yet ported to Browser panel or Processing (mapset/project handling, digitizing,...).
>
> 2- Considering the plugin name, is GRASS 8 the only supported version in QGIS? No older releases?
>
> 3- What are the requirements to get the "GRASS 8" or the "GRASS GIS Processing" plugins available in the Plugins Manager? I've always thought both were listed by default in every installation and would only work if and only if GRASS software is installed and configured, but having checked on different machines in the docs team (Windows standalone and OSGeo4W, macOS, self-build on Trixie, nixOS), with GRASS installed or not installed, we got different results I couldn't figure out the logic behind the scene. Thanks for any clarification.
>
> 4- There is no real GRASS user in the team so while refactoring the chapter, we reuse some texts that may no longer be true. Reviews for the docs pull requests [2] by better informed people are more than welcome. FYI I split the updates into smaller PRs in the hope of attracting reviewers, even those in a hurry.
>
> Thanks for any reply...
>
> [1] https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/grass_integration/grass_integration.html
> [2] https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Documentation/pulls?q=is%3Apr+state%3Aopen+label%3AGrass
>
> Regards,
> Harrissou
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