[IPython-dev] autoload and making %pydb be more ipythonic (was: Extensions/pydb_ipy.py added)

[Ville M. Vainio]

On 11/24/06, R. Bernstein <rocky at panix.com> wrote:

> I don't have a problem adding ipy_pydb.py in the pydb package. But the one thing though that I think would somehow be nice is that if one *didn't* have to do run "import ipy_pydb" to allow %pydb to work. Given that one can put this in a "try" block, I don't see any downside of doing this.

It's just that having to import ipy_pydb would make enabling pydb a
configuration option. Sometimes one may wish to use standard pdb even
when pydb is installed.

And the import need not be manual - it's quite easy to add "import
ipy_pydb" to your personal ipy_user_conf.py.

> A cool and more general mechanism for ipython extensions would be something along the lines of Emacs Lisp "autoload". Say if I run %xxx ... then if that's not registered, try to run "import ipy_xxx" (where for example xxx = pydb), and then run %xxx ....  Comments?

Well, this might save us some startup time & memory footprint. It
should be quite easy to do, esp. for magics (and completers). We can
easily inject stub callables in place of magics, which 1) import a
specified module and 2) try to run the magic again.

I think a good first line of action would be to add an ipapi function
that permanently registers a magic name / completer trigger (or
whatever)  with ipython.

Here's what one could do e.g. in setup.py for pydb:

import IPython.ipapi
ip = IPython.ipapi.get()

ip.register_autoload("%pydb", "pydb.ipy_pydb")

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Ville M. Vainio - vivainio.googlepages.com
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