Metaprogramming

The framework uses a significant amount of runtime metaprogramming in which properties and methods are swapped out or constructed at the last minute based on plugin information. This list shows some of the aspects of the Python language that are used to achieve this:

• decorators (used everywhere, qiime2.sdk.action:Action is really just a decorator-object)

• descriptor protocol (used in qiime2.core.util:LateBindingAttribute)

• import hooks (used by Artifact API)

• metaclasses (used by qiime2.plugin.model.directory_format)

• eval (qiime2.skd.util:parse_type and decorator package for signature rewriting)