[QGIS-Developer] Are there any real mandatory rules for publishing a plugin?

[Raymond Nijssen]

Hi, I also agree the plugin policies need to be changed. Also check the 
email from Stefano earlier today. I'm really feeling sorry for the ones 
who are dealing with all the new plugins.

Just some ideas from my side:

More plugin metadata:
* description where to find the plugin in QGIS
* plugin language(s)
* code is generated by AI
* plugin needs a (paid) account to function
* plugin has software dependencies
* a category?

Detect some IMHO real bad quality signs:
* Icon is still the default plugin builder icon (or even missing)
* Dialogs are not responsive

Some quality constraints for uploading to the plugin repository could be:
* Plugin should use as much as possible the QGIS functionality. For 
example, the plugin should not read or write a shapefile from disk, but 
work on vector layers. QGIS can read and write the shapefile (an many more).
* Plugin must be in English, translations can be done by Qt tr() function.
* If possible, data manipulations must be through processing algorithms
* All web traffic must be using QgsNetworkAccessManager (to make 
debugging possible)

We could also consider having a paid repo, with paid staff keeping it 
clean, high quality and safe. We could also make it easier to add/find 
other, less strictly maintained, repos.

Love to discuss this next week in Laax!

Raymond



On 9/30/26 13:59, Régis Haubourg via QGIS-Developer wrote:
> Hi, I agree that our community repository is really large now and the 
> world has changed. What should be the direction we should take according 
> to you? Something like an official repo, with a real security triage, 
> and a filter of really up to date and active tools?
> And besides this, community repositories, not activated by default ? 
> Thanks for your ideas, user conference and community meeting is next 
> week and a dedicated session would be wonderful
> Cheers
> Régis
> 
> 
> On 30/09/2026 13:31, Nicolas Godet via QGIS-Developer <qgis- 
> developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I can’t agree more on the fact that the plugin repo has become a wild 
>> jungle with less and less interest in digging into it to find an 
>> innovative one.
>> A few years ago, I spent a few minutes each week looking at each new 
>> plugin (because there were only ten or so). Now, I don’t look at new 
>> plugins anymore because there are too many of them and most of them 
>> are a duplicate of another plugin or, even worse, of a core feature.
>>
>> I think new rules should be put in place or at least a way to 
>> distinguish good, community-approved plugins from the nonsense garbage 
>> in the quest for likes for their LinkedIn post.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Nicolas
>>
>> > Le 29 sept. 2026 à 17:45, Stefano Campus via QGIS-Developer <qgis- > 
>> developer at lists.osgeo.org> a écrit :
>> >
>> > 
>> > Good morning,
>> > a few days ago, a plugin [1] was released that is a fork of an > 
>> existing plugin which had been updated (without the original plugin > 
>> author being notified) to QGIS 4.
>> > The GitHub repository has issues disabled, so it is not possible to 
>> > report bugs that are present.
>> >
>> > But shouldn’t it be mandatory to have issue reporting enabled?
>> >
>> > Furthermore, the proliferation of plugins makes it difficult to find 
>> > the truly innovative ones.
>> > So we see plugins that replicate core functions, perhaps giving them 
>> a > more appealing user interface
>> >
>> > Where can I report this to the team that coordinates the plugins?
>> > Do you think we should report these anomalies?
>> >
>> > Many thanks
>> >
>> > stefano
>> >
>> > [1] https://github.com/veogeo/go3streetview <https://github.com/ > 
>> veogeo/go3streetview>
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