QEP 54: Dropping fTools and GDALTools core plugins in favor of the Processing about qgis-enhancement-proposals HOT 28 CLOSED

Big +1 from me. No need to have duplicate code, which is sometimes worse
just because it's old.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 9:00 PM, Alexander Bruy [email protected]
wrote:

QGIS Enhancement: Dropping fTools and GDALTools core plugins in favor of
the Processing

Date 2016/01/26
Author Alexander Bruy (@alexbruy https://github.com/alexbruy)
Contact alexander dot bruy at gmail dot com
Version QGIS 2.16/3.0
Summary

Functionality of the fTools and GdalTools plugins now available in the
Processing framework. Also Procesing brings some nice additions e.g. batch
execution, scripting which was not available with fTools/GdalTools. Both
fTools and GdalTools plugins does not receive much attention since the
introduction of the Processing.

Now we have duplicated codebase and when bugs found we need to fix them
twice: in the Processing code and in the code of the fTools/GdalTools. This
increases maintenance costs and there is a chance that bug will be fixed
only in one place, causing problems for users.

There were several discussions about this including one at the hackfest in
Essen:

• http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2014-June/033359.html

• http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2015-May/037657.html

  http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2015-September/039106.html

Proposed Solution

Consolidate developers efforts on Processing, as this is more feature rich
and flexible plugin. fTools and GdalTools plugin will be removed. To keep
most used tools in the usual place and avoid confusion Processing will
create menu entries in the Vector and Raster menus, replacing removed
algorithms with its own implementation. Algorithms available from menus
will have same icons as old fTools/GdalTools tools. This also allow our
documentation writers easily update documentation, as there are no GUI
changes.
Affected Files

Directories python/plugins/fTools and python/plugins/GdalTools will be
removed. Corresponding CMakeLists.txt file should be updated.

References to both plugins also should be removed from
src/app/qgspluginregistry.cpp and ms-windows/python_plugins.nsh.

Processing code will be updated to create submenus in the Vector and
Raster menus.
Further Considerations/Improvements

In future more improvements can be made:

• implement custom dialogs for algorithms that available from menus
• create additional submenus with frequently and widely used
  algorithms to make them more visible

Backwards Compatibility

As all tools will be available in the same menus with same icons and
almost the same names there should not be any issues. The only difference
is the GUI of the Processing dialogs, which are quite different from
dialogs used in fTools/GdalTools. But as most of the users already familiar
with Processing UI this also should not be a problem.
Votes

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#54.

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In principle +1.
Main issue: the GdalTools windows are non-blocking, Processing are. This is a major problem for long running analysis. This could be solved by the multithreaded implementation of Processing, but this is not available yet.
Before proceeding, please make sure no option is missing in Processing compared to GDALTools.

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Do we have a main owner for the old fTools code is it really just anybody
at this point. As this is removing that code I don't think it really
matters but just checking first.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 9:04 PM, Paolo Cavallini [email protected]
wrote:

In principle +1.
Main issue: the GdalTools windows are non-blocking, Processing are. This
is a major problem for long running analysis. This could be solved by the
multithreaded implementation of Processing, but this is not available yet.
Before proceeding, please make sure no option is missing in Processing
compared to GDALTools.

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#54 (comment)
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Moreover: one missing functionality is the possibility of editing GDAL commands directly. Better implement it before removing the old plugin.

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@alexbruy can you maybe share some screenshots? As from what I understand there will be menu-items available too isn't it?

@pcav do you really think that is used a lot? Let's not wait on having ALL before proceeding?

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I would assume this is for the next release so if it's done early there
should be enough time to move any missing functions before release. Might
be a good idea to update the QEP with any things that need to be covered or
reasons they can't.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 9:13 PM, Richard Duivenvoorde <
[email protected]> wrote:

@alexbruy https://github.com/alexbruy can you maybe share some
screenshots? As from what I understand there will be menu-items available
too isn't it?

@pcav https://github.com/pcav do you really think that is used a lot?
Let's not wait on having ALL before proceeding?

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#54 (comment)
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@rduivenvoorde do you mean command editing, or blocking windows? The first probably not, the second has a big impact on power users. Even if not very commonly used, I would not like to make people unhappy, because we'll end up having people sticking to obsolete versions, which is bad.

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@pcav Implementing the ability to manually edit the command might be more complex than what it looks like, considering the Processing code underneath. Is it really something needed? I mean, you can edit the parameters (including the "additional commands" entry that some of them have), so you can have exactly the same. How many people actually tweak the console call?

About the GDALTools windows being not blocking, that should not be a problem once we have the multithreading execution. I guess it's worth working on that instead of keeping the two implementations.

As @NathanW2 says, this is something that will be ready for the next version, and multithreading is expected to be ready for that release as well.

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@pcav as @volaya said, it is difficult to add direct editing of the GDAL commands to Processing. Instead we can add to algorithms "Additional commands" parameter, so you can adjust resulting command if necessary. Is it enough?

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@rduivenvoorde yes, you are right. There will be menu items in the same places as fTools/GdalTools have, with same icons. I will add screenshoots

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@rduivenvoorde screenshots added

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Wow, thanks Alex for adding these!

Seeing this a big +1 !!!

Nice

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@volaya @alexbruy : about editing, I think your position is reasonable.
@volaya : about multithreading, wouldn't it be better to remove GDALTools only after merging mutithreading?
Still unsure having the same commands on the Processing toolbox and under separate menus: although codewise the duplication is removed, from the user point of view it is puzzling having two identical commands.
Sorry if I seem too critical, I think this is a big step forward!

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@pcav menus only for novice users and to prevent confusion like "Where is all my geoprocessing tools?". If you don't need this menus, you can disable them in the Processing settings and they will not be created.

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@alexbruy very nice - in the future we can always decide to switch them off by default, or enable user profiles (basic: menus enabled, no processing; advanced: the reverse)

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@alexbruy I have made this final draft mainly because there isn't really much more to add unless others need it.

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@pcav I added a change to this PR, allowing the user to configure the menu items from the Processing config. By default, it will replicate the ftools and GDALTools menus, but it can be easily configured to change that. @alexbruy just merged that PR and updated the description of this one, adding a screenshot and some text about it

About leaving GDALTools, you are right, maybe it is a good thing to only replace ftools at first and continue once we have the multithreading functionality ready

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Thanks @volaya

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I updated QEP, to reflect that we will keep GdalTools plugin until multithreading support in Processing will be availalble. This means that GdalTools will be here until QGIS 3.0, as multithreading in Processing is an API break.

@NathanW2 can we have vote on this? It would be good to have this merged early to get as much testing and feedback as possible before next release.

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I'm happy with what this includes. If someone else is then good to go.

On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Alexander Bruy [email protected]
wrote:

I updated QEP, to reflect that we will keep GdalTools plugin until
multithreading support in Processing will be availalble. This means that
GdalTools will be here until QGIS 3.0, as multithreading in Processing is
an API break.

@NathanW2 https://github.com/NathanW2 can we have vote on this? It
would be good to have this merged early to get as much testing and feedback
as possible before next release.

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#54 (comment)
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I think it is perfect like this, only with ftools replaced at the moment, and waiting for 3.0 to replace also gdal tools

so +1 from me also

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Good to go

On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 9:43 PM, volaya [email protected] wrote:

I think it is perfect like this, only with ftools replaced at the moment,
and waiting for 3.0 to replace also gdal tools

so +1 from me also

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#54 (comment)
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Code merged in master. Many thanks to all for productive discussion and valuable comments

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I tested just now. It's very very nice ! ! Thanks for your work ;-)

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@alexbruy thanks! I'm just clearing out the back log of QEPs.

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Shouldn't this be left open for the GDALTools part?

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Yes sorry.

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GDALTools removed from master in qgis/QGIS@f40e914

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