[Distutils] Adding entry points into Distutils ?

[Doug Hellmann]

On May 5, 2009, at 4:49 AM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:57 AM, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com>  
> wrote:
>> Not strong, but I have a few issues with how they are currently  
>> defined:
>>
>> * There's the issue of activated and unactivated eggs, of course,  
>> but I
>> guess that will be moot since there's no activation with just  
>> distutils?
>
> Yes
>
>> * There's no idea of explicitly enabling an entry point, simply  
>> installing a
>> package makes the entry point show up.  Implicit plugins make me
>> uncomfortable.
>
> I don't see entry points as plugins, but rather the registering of a
> given piece of code,
> under a unique name.

I don't understand that.  I thought the purpose of entry points was to  
register code such as plugins so that applications didn't have to be  
manually configured.  I think I'm with Ian on that one: Explicit is  
better than implicit.  If I have to "turn on" the plugin, then what  
benefit does an entry point registry give me?  I could just as easily  
provide that information to the application directly.

> If you add explicit enabling, who will do it ? the package that has
> the entry point ?
> The applications that consumes them ?

The user who wants the application to consume the plugin.

> The way I see entry points is "potential" plugins, an application can
> decide to consume,
> and turn into a real plugin when it uses it.
>
>
> And an entry point that would be "disabled" is an entry point that  
> is not used
> from the application A point of view, but might be used in the  
> application B.

But if it's not being used by A, why should A see it at all?

Doug