[Python-Dev] PEP 376

[P.J. Eby]

At 12:28 AM 7/4/2009 +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>I suspect this limitation of the PEP 302 APIs is the origin of the
>setuptools format that embeds the metadata inside the distribution - it
>lets you get at the metadata without having to assume that it exists
>directly on the filesystem anywhere.

I think you have this backwards; it's setuptools that doesn't care 
where (or whether) the metadata exists on the file system; it 
delegates metadata operations to a "metadata provider" that's usually 
an adapter over a PEP 302 "loader".

See 
http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PkgResources#supporting-custom-importers 
for the API details of how to register support for arbitrary PEP 302 
importers and loaders.  (Which presumably, Lukasz is using.  I didn't 
know that anybody was actually using it, but it's nice to know that 
the documentation is apparently sufficient for *some* people.  ;-) )