Plugin API

[alecandido]

The current proposal behind library extensions (what I previously called plugins) is very minimal: register them as extra modules to search routines in.

E.g. to create a Qibocal library extension with a routine ciao(), just have a module

# my_extension.py
from qibocal import Routine

ciao = Routine(...)

and register in your calibration script

from qibocal import Executor
import my_extension

_ = Executor("my_exec", extensions=[my_extension])

from my_exec import ciao

out = ciao(...)

And, internally, the executor will just search the register libraries (including the built-in one) to find the name requested, during __getattribute__ look-up.

---

The following is superseded by #869 and the proposal above.

Original proposal

Originally posted by @AleCandido in https://github.com/qiboteam/qibocal/pull/406#pullrequestreview-1608320306

protocols/ are a fundamental part of Qibocal, but at the same time they are just separately developed components, that should adhere to a given specification.

For this reason, Qibocal could be simply extended even with protocols written outside of it and registered at runtime via a given API.

To treat them on the same ground, we could even distribute protocols together with Qibocal, but in a separate package (and automatically registering them, e.g. telling the CLI to import that package by default, unless an explicit option is given, or something like that).

[andrea-pasquale]

We should have a similar mechanism for validators. _Originally posted by @AleCandido in https://github.com/qiboteam/qibocal/pull/617#discussion_r1391564165_