[Twisted-Python] Disturbing aspect of zope.interface

[Brian Granger]

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Brian Granger <ellisonbg.net at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I know this is not the zope list
>>
>
> You're right, it's not.  Perhaps you could send a message to the interface
> package development list?
>
>     https://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/interface-dev
>
>
Yes, I will do that.  I wanted to get an opinion here first from the "users
of zope.interface" first though
to see if anyone else had run into these things in the wild.


> The disturbing thing is that now A (which is just an object) has been
>> hacked on
>> by zope.interface.  It has additional methods (__provides__, etc.) that
>> are specific to
>> zope.
>>
>
> Why does this disturb you?  Would you feel better if it were called
> __zope_provides__?
>
>
Maybe a little bit, but name collisions are a minor concern in my case...


> Summary: If a class A is later subclassed by something B that calls
>> zi.implements, the original class A
>> becomes infected with all the zope.interface stuff.
>>
>
> A gets an additional attribute.  Its behavior doesn't change in any other
> way.  I don't really see what's wrong with that, unless you have a differing
> definition of the __provides__ attribute in your code.
>
>
...but __provides__ is not exactly a "plain old attribute":

* The __provides__ attribute is a descriptor that sometimes raises
AttributeError even though it exists.
This is how I found all of this.  I called dir on my class and __provides__
was listed.  But
hasattr(cls, '__provides') returned False.  I consider this to be a separate
bug, but because __provides__
started to appear on all of my classes, I was seeing it *everywhere*.

* The internal implementation of __provides__ is handled by a custom
__metaclass__ hook.
zope.interface tries to be pretty careful in not actually *using* a custom
metaclass, but it
does set and then later remove the __metaclass__ hook.

In my mind, both of these things are in the "unwanted side effect" category.


> Is there a way to avoid this?
>
>
> Depending on what your definition of "this" is, there almost certainly is.
> In the simplest case, you could submit a patch to zope interface.
>
>
That is definitely a likely outcome of this discussion.  For now though, I
was just wondering
if other's had run into this issue.  For now, it sounds like not.

Cheers,

Brian


> Doesn't this seem like a bad idea?
>>
>
> No.
>
>
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