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+--- Thread: [RFC] Summer of code project to re-think plug-in/filter development resources (/Thread-RFC-Summer-of-code-project-to-re-think-plug-in-filter-development-resources)
[RFC] Summer of code project to re-think plug-in/filter development resources - martymichal - 05-30-2025
Hi friends!
My name is Ondřej and I'm one of the 3 students working this year on GIMP as part of Google Summer of Code (see https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/05/18/gimp-3-0-4-released/#gsoc). My project is to help redesign tools in GIMP for helping creating plugins and filters for GIMP. These tools are namely the 'Procedure Browser' and 'Plug-in Browser' that you can find under the 'Help' menu tab.
I would like to learn about your experiences how you develop plug-ins and filters, what resources you use while developing and how these tools help you to get your work done.
What is it that currently works well, that could be done in a better and what is missing at the moment? I would especially appreciate getting to know about your experiences with developing for GIMP 3.
There are many ways in which I could drive this project and having more perspective coming into it is very important to me.
## Ideas
> This is a rough description of what I have written already in the upstream tracking issue (see https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/issues/259). For more details, check it out!
The original idea for this project is to create a new browser for exploring the available GEGL operations and how they can be used. In general, having access to this information is important because GEGL operations are the bread and butter of GIMP 3 through the use of the new Filter API accompanying the new non-destructive editing capabilities of GIMP. With that said, there are already ways to get this information: the GEGL website (see https://gegl.org) and the 'gegl' command line (see https://developer.gimp.org/resource/writing-a-filter/helper-tools/#gegl-command-line). But neither of these is integrated in GIMP nor shows operations registered at runtime.
Another idea is to explore combining the existing two browsers. Instead of having multiple places, where to look for information about available procedures and actions, there could be a single point of reference with all of the information included. This will require some care as to how the information is presented and how does the updated dialog integrate with tools like the Script-Fu or Python Console.
If you have any more ideas, I would love to hear them!
## Following the work
I'm tracking this effort in issue #259 (see https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/issues/259) on the GIMP-UX tracker and I'm usually present in the #gimp IRC chat room on GIMPnet. Please, do reach out to me, if you wish to discuss this project or anything GIMP-related!
RE: [RFC] Summer of code project to re-think plug-in/filter development resources - Ofnuts - 05-31-2025
Having a single source of documentation for GEGL filters (native GEGL, Gimp, and of course any locally installed GEGL filters) would be cool.
But the real cool thing would be code completion and type checking in IDEs. Gimp3 is a lot easier to code in Python because you can import "static" libraries so have many things checked at write/compile time. But all the stuff in the PDB (outside the gimp-* procedures that I hope nobody uses) is dynamic and so not covered, you have to run the code to find the mistakes.