Classes without __namespace__ cannot be used for reflection

Environment

• Pythonnet version: 3.0.0-preview2022-04-11
• Python version: 3.10
• Operating System: MacOS
• .NET Runtime: .net 6

Details

My software does lots of reflection on “plugin” types. Simply inheriting from a specific type is enough in C#, but when I use python.net I also have to define __namespace__. Since my users generally have the namespace being <Module>.<Class>, there is no logic reason for them to have to do this.

I can see which part of the code causes this:

    // from MetaType.cs:133 (git: 7247da55c174be1b733e5f9fc4e1c356f6c42dc4)
    if (clsDict.HasKey("__assembly__") || clsDict.HasKey("__namespace__"))
    {
            return TypeManager.CreateSubType(name, base_type, clsDict);
    }

I am wonder if we could broaden the cases where TypeManager.CreateSubType is used. For example in cases where the super class is a type created with CreateSubType, or just any .NET class in general. Maybe it could also be if the super class implements a specific interface.

_TODO_

Add a way to not have to specify namespace in the class in order for reflection to work.

[rmadsen-ks]

Hi @filmor, sure, but I have a bunch of features on that fork, some more or less experimental. In total, it is not that many changes. I’ll clean it up a bit and setup a PR.

[filmor]

@lostmsu I lined out how we could do it anyhow, via a runtime/startup feature flag mechanism. No magic required.