https://github.com/takluyver/entrypoints

Discover and load entry points from installed packages
https://github.com/takluyver/entrypoints

Last synced: about 16 hours ago
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Discover and load entry points from installed packages

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/takluyver/entrypoints
• Owner: takluyver
• License: mit
• Created: 2015-05-02T18:12:08.000Z (over 9 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2024-12-03T13:46:49.000Z (23 days ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-12-13T17:16:09.848Z (12 days ago)
• Language: Python
• Homepage: https://entrypoints.readthedocs.io/
• Size: 71.3 KB
• Stars: 73
• Watchers: 7
• Forks: 30
• Open Issues: 4
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.rst
  • License: LICENSE

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README

        
**This package is in maintenance-only mode.** New code should use the

`importlib.metadata module `_

in the Python standard library to find and load entry points.

Entry points are a way for Python packages to advertise objects with some

common interface. The most common examples are ``console_scripts`` entry points,

which define shell commands by identifying a Python function to run.

*Groups* of entry points, such as ``console_scripts``, point to objects with

similar interfaces. An application might use a group to find its plugins, or

multiple groups if it has different kinds of plugins.

The **entrypoints** module contains functions to find and load entry points.

You can install it from PyPI with ``pip install entrypoints``.

To advertise entry points when distributing a package, see

`entry_points in the Python Packaging User Guide

`_.

The ``pkg_resources`` module distributed with ``setuptools`` provides a way to

discover entrypoints as well, but it contains other functionality unrelated to

entrypoint discovery, and it does a lot of work at import time.  Merely

*importing* ``pkg_resources`` causes it to scan the files of all installed

packages. Thus, in environments where a large number of packages are installed,

importing ``pkg_resources`` can be very slow (several seconds).

By contrast, ``entrypoints`` is focused solely on entrypoint discovery and it

is faster. Importing ``entrypoints`` does not scan anything, and getting a

given entrypoint group performs a more focused scan.

When there are multiple versions of the same distribution in different

directories on ``sys.path``, ``entrypoints`` follows the rule that the first

one wins.  In most cases, this follows the logic of imports.  Similarly,

Entrypoints relies on ``pip`` to ensure that only one ``.dist-info`` or

``.egg-info`` directory exists for each installed package.  There is no reliable

way to pick which of several `.dist-info` folders accurately relates to the

importable modules.