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Add a `Distribution.editable` property

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start by tracing the Distribution API and its origin data, then review PEP 610's direct_url.json rules for dir_info and editable. Done means the new property exposes a boolean and returns false when origin or editable information is absent.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement feature help wanted

Recently, when trying to check if a distribution is editable, I noticed doing so using the current API is very un-ergonomic. This information is available via the direct_url.json file of PEP 610, which is exposed in Distribution.origin.

When url refers to a local directory, the dir_info key MUST be present as a dictionary with the following key:

editable (type: boolean): true if the distribution was installed in editable mode, false otherwise. If absent, default to false.

So, to check if the distribution is editable, we can check Distribution.origin.dir_info.editable, however, Distribution.origin might be None (no direct_url.json), and Distribution.origin.dir_info might not be set (url in direct_url.json in not a local directory), which.

is_editable = distribution.origin and distribution.origin.dir_info and distribution.origin.dir_info.editable

try:
    is_editable = distribution.origin.dir_info.editable
except AttributeError:
    is_editable = False

It would be helpful to have this information available via a more ergonomic API.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
142
Forks
97
No merged PRs in 30d

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