[jokosher-devel] Managing extensions

[John Green <john thegreens co uk>]

I've started to look into the 'Manage Extensions' option in the 
extensions menu and have a few questions on how extensions will be 
deployed/installed.

At the minute all the extensions we have are in a single directory. Some 
of them consist of more than one file (typically a .py and a .glade for 
instance).  Some are a single .py. Freesound search has more than one 
.py file. When  jokosher loads the extensions it retrieves a list of all 
.py files and executes the startup() function (if one exists). If we 
allow extensions to span multiple .py files then this causes a couple of 
problems. Firstly only one file will contain the startup function and 
jokosher needs a method of determining which it is. Secondly as we add 
more and more extensions with multiple files then eventually there will 
be a clash of names. Perhaps we need to organise each extension within 
its own subdirectory. Or we could just compel extensions to be contained 
within a single module but this seems a bit restrictive to me.

How will the extensions be packaged? A simple extension consisting of a 
single .py file is one thing but how will we package up multiple file 
extensions. There is mention in the wiki of eggs about which I know 
nothing I'm afraid. Are there ubuntu packages for it? The site pointed 
to only seems to have source tarballs. We could also accept .tar.gz and 
.zip files.

I think it would be helpful if extensions had a narrative that described 
their purpose briefly in one line so that the manager can display it in 
the list of installed extensions. (I'm thinking similar to firefox 
extensions here.) Of course you can only uninstall user extensions. 
Should you also be allowed to install a user extension with the same 
name as a system one? The user one would override the system one.

--
John