[Distutils] pkg_resources.declare_namespace vs pkgutil.extend_path
Phillip J. Eby
pje at telecommunity.com
Fri Aug 11 21:38:31 CEST 2006
At 02:07 PM 8/11/2006 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
>We currently have two ways of implementing namespace packages,
>
> pkg_resources.declare_namespace vs pkgutil.extend_path
>
>Do we need 2?
Um, maybe? :)
>What does pkg_resources.declare_namespace do that pkgutil.extend_path
>does, other than provide zip file support?
It provides open-ended extensible support for arbitrary importers, not just
zip files. It also tracks which packages are namespace packages so that
when new items are added to sys.path, the existing packages can be "fixed
up" to include the appropriate variant of the new path.
> Can we consolidate them
>somehow?
Not in any way that I know of. You should use declare_namespace() unless
you need .pkg files, because declare_namespace() supports PEP 302, while
extend_path() assumes all sys.path entries are directories. I don't really
understand what .pkg files are for, so declare_namespace() doesn't support
them at this time.
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