QT6 / ARM Space Syntax Toolkit migration

[joaoponceleao]

Currently the plugin is not compatible with the newly released QGIS 4. This is expected and can be fixed, but my question is whether it should be. I see the following issues at the moment:

1. On Mac, the plugin is not compatible with the latest QGIS 3 LTR due to an incompatibility in Python versions (the current Mac QGIS 3 release has a higher python 3 version than the plugin expects). This is a relatively easy fix.
2. On both Mac and PC, the plugin would need to migrate to a QT5 / QT6 compatible version for usage on QGIS 4. This is a more annoying migration that will touch several files, but doable.
3. My main concern is the dependency on depthmapXnet. On the Mac, depthmapXnet is an Intel app that requires Rosetta 2 which is being phased out in MacOS 28 (coming sometime next year in 2027). I'm not even sure if Rosetta will be available in MacOS 28 at all. In my view this is the main issue. It would require either updating depthmapX and depthmapXnet, or switch to using depthmapXcli (probably the better option). Even then, I can't tell if depthmapXcli is a universal binary or intel only. The good news obviously is that this dependency only touches a small part of the plugin. The bad news is no one seems to be actively maintaining this upstream.

I'm not sure it is feasible for anyone to migrate the plugin to QT6 just to hit a blocker the following year due to Rosetta no longer being available for depthmapXnet.

@varoudis , @jorgegil any thoughts on this? I was thinking of starting a QT6 branch for the plugin but point 3 bothers me.

[pklampros]

I've forked the toolkit and added depthmapXcli support in the primary branch (it was originally in a branch of this project here: https://github.com/SpaceGroupUCL/qgisSpaceSyntaxToolkit/tree/depthmapx_cli). if you'd like to see how to do this. I released it for a friend here: https://github.com/spatialnous/perdix. It has support for all three platforms, but not for the new M-series macs. There are builds of the cli for those as well, but some glue-code needs to be written to make them work as well..

[varoudis]

as you know I havent used QGIS for a long time, @pklampros is your form fully on dXcli?
I could test Apple M etc.

@joaoponceleao if you are using QGIS 4 can you let us know if Petro's fork works etc?

[joaoponceleao]

Thank you @pklampros . That sounds very promising, particularly since it seems you are packaging the cli in the plugin so no external programs requiring human interaction necessary . Great work on porting to QGIS 4 by the way!! I did not see any builds for arm available but from what I can see this would be a simple change to the depthmapx ci builds. I'll look into this and your fork when I have some time.
@varoudis Not yet using QGIS4, but as soon as I build an arm depthmapx_cli (or Petro includes it) I'll try it out.

[pklampros]

There's already a cli binary for arm macs (darwin). You can find it here: https://github.com/spatialnous/salatest/tree/main/RegressionTest/BaselineBinaries/Darwin_arm64. Click on dmcli, then Download (one of the buttons on the right).

I don't have a mac, so I can't test it properly, but I'll include it soon in the next update.

Btw, you can add the related repo (https://qgis.apps.spatialnous.com) to QGIS if you want to get updates (plugins.qgis.org doesn't allow binaries)

[pklampros]

New version up

[jorgegil]

Thank you all for this amazing work in updating the toolkit to the latest upgrade of QGIS and making it work with cli, which is a much more robust and long term solution.

When I have time, in the coming weeks, I will test this.