[Lazarus] IDE idea

Michael Van Canneyt michael at freepascal.org
Mon Nov 3 09:12:26 CET 2008



On Sun, 2 Nov 2008, Mac Programmer wrote:

> I've been working recently with QGIS (www.qgis.org), a slick, cross- 
> platform, Qt-based GIS. QGIS has a feature that is so cool, you  
> almost have to see it to appreciate it. But here's a brief  
> description anyway:
> 
> QGIS supports plugins written in Python. If you've developed a nifty  
> plugin, all you have to do is zip up your files, post the .zip on  
> your Web site, then supply your users with the URL of a simple .xml  
> file (called a plugin repository). For example:
> 
> <plugins>
>    <pyqgis_plugin name="MyPlug" version="0.0.1">
>      <description>Description goes here.</description>
>      <homepage/>
>      <file_name>myplug.zip</file_name>
>      <author_name>My Name</author_name>
>      <download_url>http://my.web.site/myplug.zip</download_url>
>    </pyqgis_plugin>
> </plugins>
> 
> When your user enters this URL in QGIS's Plugin Installer, it  
> downloads the .zip file, unzips it in the .qgis folder in your home  
> folder (~ or C:\Documents and Settings\<username>), and adds it to  
> the list of available plugins that can be activated in QGIS.
> 
> But wait, there's more. If you select a plugin in the list that is  
> not installed, the button says "Install Plugin". If it's already  
> installed, the button says "Reinstall Plugin" (useful if you suspect  
> that you've corrupted or deleted some of the plugin's files). And if  
> a _newer_ version is available, the button says "Upgrade Plugin".
> 
> You can manually have it scan all the repositories you've entered or  
> optionally let it scan all repositories automatically when QGIS  
> starts up. If it finds a plugin that you have installed and there's a  
> newer version available, this is listed at the top of the available  
> plugins list and highlighted in bold.
> 
> It seems as though something like this might be useful in the Lazarus  
> IDE for listing, downloading, installing and updating available  
> packages. For example, perhaps the Installed Packages dialog could be  
> extended to include this kind of feature. Selecting a package from a  
> list of available packages in a repository XML would download and  
> unzip the package source files under ~/.lazarus, then proceed with  
> compiling the .lpk file and re-compiling Lazarus to install the  
> package. This would also be useful for keeping up to date  
> automatically with the latest version of a package that you use.
> 
> As it is now, the way in which packages are made available can be  
> different for each package and keeping up with the latest package  
> version requires manually checking each package site. This might also  
> help package authors and porters to keep their package up to date. At  
> any given point in time it seems as though half the packages for  
> Lazarus are broken (won't compile). Maybe this would be a way of  
> automatically testing which packages, say on CCR, are broken and  
> alerting the authors.

We are working on such a system, it's called fpmake and fppkg.
FPC itself will be converted to this, Lazarus too.

And, it's written in 100% Object Pascal.

Michael.



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