Make Kiva a separate package?

[corranwebster]

This is really a discussion topic.

While we can keep it in the same repo for convenience, it may make sense for Kiva to be split out from Enable as a stand-alone package (ie. separate entry in PyPI, and separately installable by EDM).

There are downsides to doing this, particularly around distribution.

However Kiva is potentially useful by itself as a drawing framework, and it doesn't require all of the dependencies that Enable has to be useful.

[mikelyndon]

This is a pretty old discussion topic but I thought I'd ask anyway. I've been searching for a font management module and I'm always pointed back to Kiva. The fonttools module is much nicer than the original matplotlib. If Kiva were separate that would certainly help decrease the dependencies.

[corranwebster]

Thanks for the input. This isn't off the table, but would require removing all of the Traits-dependent code from Kiva first, I think.

It's interesting that the fonttools code is independently useful, since it feels like it is the bare minimum that Kiva needs to do font discovery. If we do split things up, we'll take that into account.