[Qgis-user] Migrating legacy QGIS instance

[Walt Ludwick]

I've inherited a legacy GIS, built up over some years in versions 2.x, that
i'm now responsible to maintain.  Being an almost complete n00b (did take a
short course in QGIS a good few years ago, but still..), i could really use
some advice about migration.

i've created a new QGIS instance in version 3.14, into which i am trying to
bring all useful content from our old system: oodles of shapefiles,
essentially, plus all those other files (each .shp file appears to bring
with it a set of.shx, .dbf, .prj, qpj  files, plus a .cpg file for each
layer, it seems).  This is a significant dataset- 14gb, >1000 files -and
that is just base data, not counting Projects built on this data or Layouts
used for presenting these projects in various ways. Some of this is cruft
that i can happily do without, but still:  i've got a lot of porting-over
to do, without a clear idea of how best to do it.

The one thing i'm clear about is: i want it all in a non-proprietary
database (i.e. no more mess of .shp and related files) that is above all
quick & easy to navigate & manage. It is a single-user system at this
point, but i do aim to open it up to colleagues (off-LAN, i.e. via
Internet) as soon as i've developed simple apps for them to use.  No idea
how long it'll take me to get there, so...

Big question at this point is: What should be the new storage format for
all this data?  Having read a few related opinions on StackOverflow, i get
the sense that GeoPackage will probably make for easiest migration (per this
encouraging article
<https://medium.com/@GispoFinland/learn-spatial-sql-and-master-geopackage-with-qgis-3-16b1e17f0291>,
it's a simple matter of drag&drop -simple if you have just a few, i guess!
[1]), and can easily support my needs in the short term, but then i wonder:
How will i manage migration to PostGIS when i eventually put  this system
online with different users/ roles enabled?

[1] Given that i need to pull in some hundreds of .shp files that are
stored in a tree of many folders & subfolders, i also wonder: is there a
simple way that i can ask QGIS to traverse a certain directory, pull in all
the .shp files -each as its own .gpkg layer, i suppose?

Any advice about managing this migration would be much appreciated!
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