Image providers are currently stored in the QML engine, which is most likely the wrong place, considering that images are inherently graphical while the engine can be used in a non-UI context. A better place for the image providers might be QQuickWindow.

We'd also like to have a replacement for QQmlEngine::addImageProvider, as that leads often to non-optional plugins: If a QML module wants to register an image provider, it has to call addImageProvider, for which it needs an engine pointer. The only way to obtain that pointer is by writing a plugin, with a custom initializeEngine method. As that plugin does more than registering types, it cannot be optional.

Maybe we need to mirror QML singletons, and provide a way to register a factory function. Then the engine could trigger the creation of the providers on-demand – though that raises the question where to store the factory functions.

We also need to investigate thread-safety:
1) Is it currently possible to share the same image provider among multiple engines?
2) If yes, does that actually work, or do we just get lucky when it comes to race conditions.