Bots: Add support for running packaged bots via entrypoints

PIG208 commented 3 years ago

This revives #517;

TODO:

[x] Consider using importlib.metadata or importlib_metadata instead of entrypoints (which doesn't seem to be actively maintained)
[x] Add a packaged bot boilerplate for demonstration purpose
[ ] Add documentation for this feature

timabbott commented 3 years ago

I fixed a typo in one of the docstrings, and merged this. I think we will probably want to iterate further on the concept, but the best way to do this is to push on the documentation for how to create your own bot -- ideally we want it to be really simple and not involve manual copy-paste work. I posted an idea above that we could have a tool generate a template bot for you (that you can then git init or just run pip install . to get started); that would mean you don't really need to think.

The other option is that we offer a GitHub repository for you to fork; but the problem with that is that you'll now have a repository for example_bot, which isn't what you wanted, so your first step is to do a bunch of renaming.

neiljp commented 3 years ago

It's great to see this merged! Thanks @PIG208 ! :tada:

zulip / python-zulip-api

Bots: Add support for running packaged bots via entrypoints #708