fabric/fabric — Issue #565: Split out non-ssh-dependent features into separate lib
Author: bitprophet
Created: 2012-02-22 00:28:03+00:00
State: open
Labels: 2.x, Packaging, Refactoring, Support, Wart

Things are coming to a head and it'd be good to split out Fabric's task execution stuff into its own library so it can be used/referenced independently of our SSH functionality.

Right now, anybody wanting to use Fab-as-runner must still install `ssh` and `PyCrypto`, which sucks.

Making the SSH side of things the split-out lib makes less sense because Fabric has always identified most strongly with the SSH bits, and it wouldn't be possible to make the import optional-but-default (i.e. newbies should always get the SSH stuff, and there is no good way to make it easy for non-newbies to just get the runner tool, unless we split it out like this.)

It could be possible to do this in a backwards compat sense, API-wise (i.e. it'd add a new install dep but no API changes), prior to 2.0 if we want; but marking 2.0 for now since it is a big change. We'll see how the timing works out.

We need a name for this new runner. Brainstorm incoming.