plugin development best practices

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On 22 Feb 2007 04:53:02 -0800, Flavio <fccoelho at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Nowadays the addition of functionality to programs by means  of
>plugins is very frequent.
>
>I want to know the opinions of experienced Python developers about the
>best practices when it comes to developing a plugin system for a
>Python package.
>
>Should plugins be modules in a separate package?
>Should there be a registry  of available plugins? how would such a
>registry  be implemented? etc.
>
>thanks,
>

Best practice may be to not develop a new plugin system.  There are quite a
few available already.  Most likely, at least one of them is suitable for your
application.

Here are a couple starting points:

http://twistedmatrix.com/projects/core/documentation/howto/plugin.html

http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools#dynamic-discovery-of-services-and-plugins

Jean-Paul