SAGA Interface HOWTO - CzendaZdenda/qgis GitHub Wiki
This document is a basic guide to installing and testing the development version of the SAGA Modules interface for QGIS. While this is experimental software, not yet ready for production use, your help & feedback is very much appreciated. Please don't hesitate to send any comments on this document or the software to either the QGIS developers mailing list ([email protected]) or my own e-mail([email protected]). Bugs can also be reported through the Issue tracker.
Requisites
To get the SAGA interface working, you need a recent version of QGIS(version 1.5 or up) with GDAL (version 1.7.0, at least) support, installed.
Additionally, you'll need to have the SAGA Python bindings installed.
If you are using debian, packages (python-saga) are available from the unstable repositories. On a debian stable machine, you can locally install the python-saga, lib-saga and libhpdf-2.2.1 packages from the unstable repos.
For ubuntu, it is recommended that you use the packages from https://launchpad.net/~ubuntugis/+archive/ubuntugis-unstable, which will also add newer version of other gis applications, including qgis and gdal. This should install everything smoothly, without the need for further config. Else, there are also packages available at https://launchpad.net/~johanvdw/+archive/saga-gis.
If you are using neither of the above distributions or in case you want to build from source, see How to install the SAGA Python Bindings for further instructions.
Installation of the plugins
There are two relevant plugins, which you can both install thorugh QGIS' Python plugin installer (Plugins > Fetch python plugins... menu) and manage through the Plugin manager.
- the Processing Framework Manager, aka processingplugin
- the SAGA Module interface plugin itself
Plugin usage
After installation, the Processing Framework Manager should provide you with a new Processing menu, which so far only has one item: a toggle to show and hide the list of plugins in a panel like the following.
If installation went ok & QGIS can find the SAGA libaries, the panel should display a list of modules, sorted by tags. Else, QGIS will ask you for the location of the SAGA libraries. To avoid having to provide this path on every QGIS start, you may want to set the MLB_PATH environment variable.
To run a module, double-click on the module's name in the list. A dialog asking for parameters should pop-up. Set the relevant parameters (some may be optional) and click on the Execute button.
Currently, by far not all modules are supported. You may often encounter that some parameters are labeled 'Unsupported parameter of type ____'. We are working on it. If you want, you can add modules you have tested and work to the list of tested modules.
Troubleshooting & bug reports
The framework & interface are both in a very early state of development, so you'll probably encounter bugs and errors. To report these problems, please provide the python full backtraces, which should be displayed in a pop-up box after plugin crashes, together with the conditions that triggered the error.
In case you get segmentation faults (the whole program crashes), you may want to run QGIS in a terminal (console) or, if possible, debugger, to provider further data on the source of the bug.
Please use the project's Issue tracker or any of the mentioned e-mails ([email protected] and/or [email protected]) to report bugs. Help may also be available through the #qgis IRC channel on freenode.
Thanks a lot!