[Distutils] Metadata extension discovery?

[Nick Coghlan]

On 12 September 2014 07:51, Marcus Smith <qwcode at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the assumption for extensions in PEP426 that they would be added to the
> one an only structure (in pydist.json) at the time of building the archive?
> i.e. something that the project author adds.
>
> The reason I ask is related to my comment in the other thread occuring right
> now about how to handle external dependencies.   If the idea of using
> extensions for external dependencies is going to work (and not require the
> project authors to solely maintain it), then PEP426 would need to support
> some system of discovery that can layer on more metadata at the time of
> install that is not present in the archive.

This is actually an open question. One possible way to go would be to
add a "pydist.d" directory to wheels and the installed metadata, where
packages can drop arbitrary additional extension files (where the file
is called "name.of.extension.json").

A lot of Linux tools with plugin systems or otherwise extensible
configuration have switched to that model, since adding files to a
directory is much easier than editing an existing config file in a way
that can be cleanly reverted.

Regards,
Nick.

P.S. OK, I take back my earlier comment about PEP 426 being almost
ready to go :)

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia