Jupyterlab: Making lab extensions discoverable on pypi

[ClaytonPassmore]

I have talked offline with @jasongrout about this and he suggested I post here so we could get some opinions.

Currently, it's really hard for users to discover new extensions on pypi. To make it easier, something should probably be added to the extension cookie cutter. The end goal would be to have an extension manager of some kind that could search pypi for extensions.

Originally I was thinking that we could modify the setup args in setup.py to include the platforms attribute which would contain 'JupyterLab'. Then we could search against that attribute with pypi's XML RPC search method.

@jasongrout mentioned we should at least add a 'JupyterLab' keyword.

What's the best way to do this?

[blink1073]

I think having jupyterlab and extension keywords as part of the the cookiecutter setup.py and the documentation for creating a JupyterLab plugin would be a sound solution.

[jasongrout]

+1 to using the keywords field. I think the platform field _could_ be used, but I think it's also misusing the purpose of the platform field a bit.

@ClaytonPassmore, do you want to open PRs to the cookie cutter and the documentation?

[ClaytonPassmore]

@jasongrout can we close this?