Hi devs,
I am still evolving my GDAPS plugin system for Django (which works well
here), and try to overcome some shortcomings of Django that is not
really easy so solve, like dynamically added INSTALLED_APPS.
Given the need that a plugin that is installed/found via
setuptools/entry point (like GDAPS, or e.g. Pretix does), it can
sometimes be necessary that a plugin itself needs another app (like e.g.
django-money etc.) as "dependency".
Install-wise this is no problem, as it can be added as "dependency" in
setup.py, setup.cfg or, as in my case, pyproject.toml. But to make the
main app use that dependency, it must be added to the INSTALLEd_APPS
list during the setup process.
I solved that problem by adding a helper function that must be called
after INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py, which dynamically imports the
plugin class (no models, no views, just the plugin main class itself,
e.g. "foo_main_app.plugins.dynamically_added_plugin", and searches for
an INSTALLED_APPS attr in that namespace. If it exists, it is basically
appended to the main INSTALLED_APPS.
To solve ordering problems, it is a bit more complicated, and the plugin
gets the chance to reorder the INSTALLED_APPS and insert its own
dependencies (and itself) to a special index.
But basically the main module of the django (plugin) app is imported,
and read. This works, but I'd like to ask you if this violates any of
Django's principles, or if there would be a better approach in the long
term to create pluggable apps, that just can be installed by pip.
The only reason I post it here (in dev) is that this may be of interest
too for Django itself at some point in time too. But here I need your
feedback.
I first wanted to put that information into the AppConfig class - but
can't be loaded in settings.py - apps aren't loaded.
So, for my taste, plugin information is a bit scattered around
(AppConfig in apps.py, INSTALLED_APPS and more in __init__.py). It could
be added declaratively in some yaml file too, but this would feel even
creepier to me.
Eager to hear your opinion here.
--
Dr. Christian González
https://nerdocs.at
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