The repository seems like a fine piece of work but sadly isn't ready for py3.

So it either needs some fixes or a rewrite. I have done a component registry using distutils ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13545289/how-do-i-add-a-setuptools-entry-point-as-an-example-in-my-main-project ) which works quite nicely.

One drawback is: for every component in every package there must be an according entry in the latter's setup.py so distutils can find the module for inspection. You can then query distutils for classes and probably any python object - though i've only tried with classes yet.

'git ls-tree -r --name-only | wc' results in 4,8k files totalling ~130 MB of diskspace which is a bit much to work on.
Especially since Axon and Kamaelia only amount to 25 MB in around 622 files, which seems way more manageable.

Furthermore, it is quite unhandy to carry around so many different applications (read: packages!) in a single repository. This is imho:

• bad for the applications, since they cannot be easily used/maintained
• results in developer frustration

I see some advantages but they are imo negligible, so i would advise to split up somehow. git allows submodules, which i think would be the best method to handle at least core packages. Dunno about the apps, though.

Currently kamaelia components follow a regular pattern which looks like this:

class PathologicalExample(Axon.Component.component):
    logfile = "test.log"
    ...
    def main(self):
        try:
            while True:
                for message in self.Inbox():
                    self.process(message)
                if self.dataReady("control"):
                    raise GotShutdownMessage()
                if not self.anyReady():
                    self.pause()
                yield 1

        except GotShutdownMessage:
            self.send(self.recv("control"), "signal")
            yield 1
            return

        self.send(Axon.Ipc.producerFinished(), "signal")
        yield 1

In that example, the only part that is specific to the component is self.process. While PureTransformer exists, as an approach it's incomplete, and doesn't support threaded components. Having a better "Sugar" component to allow these sorts of components to be OK, as well as components that look like this:

class SerialSender(Axon.ThreadedComponent.threadedcomponent):
    """ Derived from kamaelia.git/Sketches/MPS/ArduinoRelated/ArdCube.py#SerialIO"""
    serialport = '/dev/ttyUSB0'
    baudrate = 9600
    def main(self):  # FIXME: Shutdown for this component does not play nicely with others
        ser = serial.Serial(self.serialport, self.baudrate)
        while True:
            for msg in self.Inbox("inbox"):
                ser.write(str(msg))
            time.sleep(0.01)

-- ie to enable this sort of component to play nicely - would be very nice/useful. Additionally, this could act as bridging code to the kamaelia rewrite Guild that should be starting at some point.