[Python-Dev] PEP 376 proposed changes for basic plugins support

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 3:06 AM, P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> ..
>>
>> So without specific examples of why this is a problem, it's hard to see why
>> a special Python-specific set of configuration files is needed to resolve
>> it, vs. say, encouraging application authors to use the available
>> alternatives for doing plugin directories, config files, etc.
> 
> I don't have a specific example in mind, and I must admit that if an
> application does the right thing
> (provide the right configuration file), this activate feature is not
> useful at all. So it seems to be a bad idea.
> 
> I propose that we drop the PLUGINS file idea and we add a new metadata
> field called Provides-Plugin
> in PEP 345, which will contain the info I've described minus the state
> field. This will allow us to expose
> plugins at PyPI.
> 
> IOW, have entry points like setuptools provides, but in a metadata
> field instead of a entry_points.txt file.

Do we really need to make Python packaging even more complicated by
adding support for application-specific plugin mechanisms ?

Packages can already work as application plugins by simply defining
a plugins namespace package and then placing the plugin packages
into that namespace.

See Zope for an example of how well this simply mechanism works out in
practice: it simply scans the "Products" namespace for sub-packages and
then loads each sub-package it finds to have it register itself with Zope.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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