[Distutils] Entry points: specifying and caching

[Thomas Kluyver]

On Thu, Oct 19, 2017, at 08:29 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:
> Because it is? A generic plugin mechanism is not a packaging feature
> any more then a HTTP client is a packaging feature, but setuptools
> contains one of those too. Since setuptools was in large part a
> packaging library, it will of course contain many packaging features
> that we’re going to standardize on, but something being in setuptools
> does not in fact make it a packaging feature in and of itself.
My argument is not that it's in setuptools, it's that

1. It's already processed by multiple packaging tools
2. Any tool producing wheels which include command line tools basically
   has to use entry points (or include a bunch of redundant complexity
   to make command-line wrappers). It's a de-facto part of the wheel
   spec, at least until a replacement is devised - and since it works,
   replacing for semantic cleanliness is not a priority.
You're quite right that a plugin system doesn't need to be a packaging
standard. But that ship has sailed. It's already a standard format for
packaging, the only question is whether it's documented. Practicality
beats purity.
Thomas
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