After the short presentation of the GeoServer Monitor PostgreSQL Plugin during FOSS4G EU, I wonder if there shouldn’t be a place somewhere (on github? on website?) that provides a list of plugins which are not part of the stable or community extensions but that can be tried or used by the community.
It could improve the visibility of the community.
I don’t have a clear registration process in mind. Perhaps something like awesome-geoserver list on GitHub, which could also reference other geoserver related stuff.
Hey I saw your slides online and was keen to see it in action
As for sharing external modules, … we did kind of try that initially.
It mostly worked, but we got a bit burnt out helping folks build functionality that never contributed value back into the codebase.
The ease to apply for a community module (just ask) was the result. Although I would love to see more modules become extensions.
So what do I need to do to encourage you to sign up as a community module?
In an ideal world the module would live inside the GeoServer source tree so it would automatically be published on the main extension pages (either community or supported) - this would also give other developers (and you) a heads up if something was about to break.
I think this is a valid thought - specifically a way in which the developer of an extension can get it to users before stable publication. Back when I was doing a QGIS plugin, I was encouraged to release very early indeed with the “experimental” flag set. It was very difficult to get any feedback or testing before doing that, but takeup was subsequently really good. Obviously, plugins for a desktop application are a very different thing to Geoserver modules/extensions, but some kind of official channel would probably help. But there’s still a workload - QGIS plugins have to be approved to be published in their plugin repo. So it might not be possible.
