Re: [Gimp-developer] Fwd: Gimp Registry Future

[scl <scl gplus gmail com>]

Hi,

it's interesting to see what interest such a post can trigger ;-)
To be honest, it wasn't me who started the discussion, I just forwarded
Ingo's call to the mailing list.

'GIMP is easily user-extendable, by ‘one-click’ installation of
plug-ins.' is a part of our product-vision and as far as I remember
there have already been many ideas on this topic, dating back to 2003.

For both the registry and GIMP the situation changes:
Registry: from some or many users who know and use the registry to
potentially every user who can access it conveniently from GIMP. These
are millions.
GIMP: From a standalone application that uses mostly local data to
an application with tighter access to an online service.

I think before we start losing ourselves prematurely in implementation
details like programming language and data formats we should clarify
the overall picture first:
- What are the concrete requirements: functional and nonfunctional
requirements,
- user interaction,
- overall technical architecture and integration into GIMP,
- reuse of existing solutions like package managers,
- who will also care in future for the registry and the plug-in manager?
- Integration into the Jenkins builds and manpower to handle this.

Examples for functional requirements:
* installing only plug-ins or also other assets,
* curation/quality assurance of provided assets,
* metadata of the assets,
* search and filter functionality.

Examples for nonfunctional requirements:
* performance: be fluent, also with a slow internet connection,
* security, protection against abuse,
* scalability (how many users will access the registry at one time or
at maximum),
* target platform,
* maintainability (even with our given low resources).

Perhaps it would - depending on our resources - first be better to cut
down the registry to the necessary part we can handle, e.g. to remove
the functionality that causes spam and start with a little
thing in GIMP, like a clickable link to open the registry in a
browser and easy to find assets folders in the Preferences.

Kind regards,

Sven