[IPython-dev] Cell magics and extensions

[Thomas Kluyver]

On 8 June 2012 04:53, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was just thinking that if we specify that an extension is *only* a
> setup.py and a foo.py file, and that its PyPI name is something like
> ipython_ext_foo, then we could then just let people use PyPI for
> hosting, and we could write an %install_ext magic that does the
> installation, by default going into the user's own IPYTHONDIR (or
> perhaps into the dir written to by --user, with a pseudo-package
> ipython_ext?).

At present, %install_ext just takes a URL which points directly to
foo.py - it downloads that and puts it in the user's IPYTHONDIR. I'm
pretty happy with this workflow for user-level installation inside
IPython.

For systemwide installation, I wonder if we need to do something like
making IPython.extensions a namespace package, so that pip can install
other packages into it. I'm sure it's possible, but I don't know
precisely what we need to do.

> Doesn't something like this work?
> https://raw.github.com/gist/GISTNUMBER/FILENAME?

Brilliant, thanks Jason. Then I think we can point extension authors
to gist if they don't want to set up a regular repository.

Best wishes,
Thomas