[Python-Dev] Providing a mechanism for PEP 3115 compliant dynamic class creation

[Nick Coghlan]

In reviewing a fix for the metaclass calculation in __build_class__
[1], I realised that PEP 3115 poses a potential problem for the common
practice of using "type(name, bases, ns)" for dynamic class creation.

Specifically, if one of the base classes has a metaclass with a
significant __prepare__() method, then the current idiom will do the
wrong thing (and most likely fail as a result), since "ns" will
probably be an ordinary dictionary instead of whatever __prepare__()
would have returned.

Initially I was going to suggest making __build_class__ part of the
language definition rather than a CPython implementation detail, but
then I realised that various CPython specific elements in its
signature made that a bad idea.

Instead, I'm thinking along the lines of an
"operator.prepare(metaclass, bases)" function that does the metaclass
calculation dance, invoking __prepare__() and returning the result if
it exists, otherwise returning an ordinary dict. Under the hood we
would refactor this so that operator.prepare and __build_class__ were
using a shared implementation of the functionality at the C level - it
may even be advisable to expose that implementation via the C API as
PyType_PrepareNamespace().

The correct idiom for dynamic type creation in a PEP 3115 world would then be:

    from operator import prepare
    cls = type(name, bases, prepare(type, bases))

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Nick.

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue1294232

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia