Class based plugins API

[inorton]

Describe the enhancement

Currently plugins work by developers providing module level functions with particular names, this is simple but can make it difficult when we want to alter the plugin API

My personal preference is for plugins to implement a base class that we provide. That should also make it easier for us to do things like the "per plugin logging" and others. It can also give us more control over how we present functions that have to run on the main loop or can run in a thread.

I've raised this as a placeholder for discussion.

[A-UNDERSCORE-D]

This is covered by https://github.com/A-UNDERSCORE-D/EDMarketConnector/tree/feature/new-plugin-system somewhat, but that remains unfinished -- and needs rebasing again at this point. Honestly I should open a PR with that branch so its more visible

[inorton]

@A-UNDERSCORE-D In my own experiments, I made a old-style plugin that implements a new plugin API :)

[inorton]

This is covered by https://github.com/A-UNDERSCORE-D/EDMarketConnector/tree/feature/new-plugin-system somewhat, but that remains unfinished -- and needs rebasing again at this point. Honestly I should open a PR with that branch so its more visible

I have occasionally wondered if plugins should be Processes rather than just classes/code we load. There is also the idea that some plugins can depend on other plugins, or offer extra functions if other plugins are present.

[inorton]

My attempt (that I forgot about until @A-UNDERSCORE-D pasted the branch) was https://github.com/inorton/EDMC-prototype-plugin-system

With a couple of examples https://github.com/inorton/EDMC-prototype-plugin-journal-example/blob/master/load.py and https://github.com/inorton/EDMC-prototype-plugin-dash-example/blob/master/load.py

[A-UNDERSCORE-D]

processes would be very difficult to get right -- and pickle would get silly (assuming using multiprocessing)

for actual deps either way there is some support for that in my branch, plugins can define providers by string, and others can check for a providers existence and call though the plugin system to request data

[A-UNDERSCORE-D]

as an example for that: https://github.com/A-UNDERSCORE-D/EDMarketConnector/blob/feature/new-plugin-system/plugin/test/test_plugins/good/provides_something/__init__.py

[Athanasius]

Some of it is likely out of date/moot, but there's also https://github.com/EDCD/EDMarketConnector/projects/9

[Athanasius]

This is covered by A-UNDERSCORE-D/EDMarketConnector@feature/new-plugin-system somewhat, but that remains unfinished -- and needs rebasing again at this point. Honestly I should open a PR with that branch so its more visible

Yes, yes you should.

[A-UNDERSCORE-D]

This is covered by A-UNDERSCORE-D/EDMarketConnector@feature/new-plugin-system somewhat, but that remains unfinished -- and needs rebasing again at this point. Honestly I should open a PR with that branch so its more visible

Yes, yes you should.

#1228