[Distutils] Standardizing distribution of "plugins" for extensible apps

[Thomas Heller]

>> I'd prefer to be able to use a plugin archive (.par, anyone?)
>> directly with zipimport in the case that it's a pure Python archive
>> (or if it's on some hypothetical platform that can load extensions
>> from a zipfile).  Ideally, also, one should also be able to unzip a
>> .par directly into site-packages or a subdirectory thereof and use
>> it.  Thus, I'd prefer to see an internal layout that's something
>> more like:
> <zip layout compatible with zipimport>
>
> Uh, why does it matter if zipimport can do something with it if we're
> going to need a custom importer anyway?

If you use a custom importer, it could extract extension modules to the
file system on demand (for those non-hypotetical platforms where it's
required).  And it may even be possible with zipimporter, if the archive
has some custom extension loaders.

Thomas