Research: could Datasette install its own plugins?

[simonw]

It would be cool if Datasette could offer a plugin browsing interface where users could install plugins by clicking "Install" on them - similar to how VS Code extensions work.

[simonw]

Since plugins are installed via pip this would require Datasette to be restarted. This StackOverflow thread looks relevant to that: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11329917/restart-python-script-from-within-itself

This recipe looks promising:

import os
import sys
import psutil
import logging

def restart_program():
    """Restarts the current program, with file objects and descriptors
       cleanup
    """

    try:
        p = psutil.Process(os.getpid())
        for handler in p.get_open_files() + p.connections():
            os.close(handler.fd)
    except Exception, e:
        logging.error(e)

    python = sys.executable
    os.execl(python, python, *sys.argv)

https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.execl says about os.execl:

These functions all execute a new program, replacing the current process; they do not return. On Unix, the new executable is loaded into the current process, and will have the same process id as the caller