feat(anywidget): Drop ipywidgets dependency #579
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Important
This is an experiment to tame the Python complexity of anywidget. We want to avoid breaking API changes for most anywidget projects; but I anticipate this will result in some breaking changes for widgets using low-level (undocumented) APIs.
The idea is to have anywidgets continue to subclass
anywidget.AnyWidget
in the same exact way, but cut outipywidgets.DOMWidget
from the inheritance chain (favoringtraitlets.HasTraits
instead).This PR also allows us to dogfood the
anywidget.MimeBundleDescriptor
work. One challenge with having widgets subclass fromipywidgets.DOMWidget
is that all public (low-level) methods for creating widgets end up in public APIs to end users (i.e., poor encapsulation of comms).Rather than polluting the top-level Widget with comms-related public methods, all comms usage is confined to the
_repr_mimebundle_
. This namespace is "private", and something that only anywidget authors would need to know about.Before
After
TODO:
FWIW, I think ideally widget authors would have more choice over the class for their widget (i.e.,
msgspec
,pydantic
,dataclass
), but this is definitely a step in the right direction. If anything, it allows us to nail down APIs on the mimebundle descriptor that are "essential".