[Python-Dev] metaclass insanity

[Christopher Armstrong]

Guido van Russom wrote on Mon, 04 Nov 2002 15:54:48 -0500
> Can someone provide a reason why you'd want to use nested classes?
> I've never felt this need myself.  What are the motivations?

Yes. In Reality (a Twisted Matrix Labs project), a text-based virtual
world simulation framework, we have a system that can automatically
generate Interface definitions from classes (with a metaclass that
builds them at class-def time). Twisted has an Interface/adapter/
componentized system similar to Zope's in twisted.python.components,
and we use components/adapters to their fullest in Reality.

The problem is, our virtual worlds are persistent, so most of our
objects get pickled (or serialized with some similar mechanism), and
our objects hold references to these automatically-generated
Interfaces. We would *like* to have these automatically-generated
Interfaces as attributes of the classes they were generated for,
but we have to use a hack that does something like::

    setattr(subclass.__module__, interfaceName, NewInterface)

This is really horrible, IMO.

Anyway, regardless that this may be a somewhat obscure use-case
(although one we rely heavily on), It _is_ wrong that str(klass) is
lying about its location, and I seriously doubt fixing it would cause
any problems.

-- 
			Christopher Armstrong
		    << radix@twistedmatrix.com >>
	     http://twistedmatrix.com/users/radix.twistd/