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plugin development best practices

Flavio fccoelho at gmail.com
Thu Feb 22 08:50:36 EST 2007 
On Feb 22, 11:01 am, Jean-Paul Calderone <exar... at divmod.com> wrote:
> On 22 Feb 2007 04:53:02 -0800, Flavio <fccoe... 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-...
>
> Jean-Paul

The plugin system provided by twisted looks interesting (though not as
simple as it could be, IMHO). Its main problem is that it introduces
two dependencies : Twisted plugin and ZopeInterface. I think a
functional plugin system could(and should) be done using only the
standard library.

Flávio
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