poposal: namespace for community contributed apps

[Bülent]

The popularity of django has resulted in a growing number of community driven add-ons:

• django-registration
• django-voting, etc..

It would be great, if all community driven add-ons would use a convention to hook into the django namespace:

• django.addons.registration,
• django.addons.voting, etc.

to streamline what is django related and where to put these things (in concrete: in the python library), could you please provide a folder with a init.py named eg "addons" where to put all the django related add-on modules? And of course: propagating it in the documentation, as a good practice for add-on writers?

Thank you very much!

[Russell Keith-Magee]

While I appreciate what you're trying to contribute here, the namespace suggestion doesn't really improve reusability in any way. You can already put applications into their own namespace, and forcing developers to use a common namespace (django.addons) only serves to introduce a new point at which name clashes to occur.

There are many issues associated with making applications easily reusable - providing module names and a common install point isn't one of them. There is a whole Google Group (django-hotclub) which is focussing on determining what constitues best practice for reusable app design. As soon as there is consensus on what those best practices are, we'll be happy to include them in official documentation. In the meantime, there are lots of blogs that make suggestions on how to maximize potential for reuse - for starters, have a read of
​The B-List.