salt/doc/topics/tutorials/packaging_modules.rst

Packaging External Modules for Salt

External Modules Setuptools Entry-Points Support

The salt loader was enhanced to look for external modules by looking at the salt.loader entry-point:

https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pkg_resources.html#entry-points

pkg_resources should be installed, which is normally included in setuptools.

https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pkg_resources.html

The package which has custom engines, minion modules, outputters, etc, should require setuptools and should define the following entry points in its setup function:

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
    name=THE_NAME,
    version=THE_VERSION,
    description=THE_DESCRIPTION,
    author=THE_AUTHOR_NAME,
    author_email=THE_AUTHOR_EMAIL,
    url=" ... ",
    packages=find_packages(),
    entry_points="""
    [salt.loader]
    engines_dirs = <package>.<loader-module>:engines_dirs
    fileserver_dirs = <package>.<loader-module>:fileserver_dirs
    pillar_dirs = <package>.<loader-module>:pillar_dirs
    returner_dirs = <package>.<loader-module>:returner_dirs
    roster_dirs = <package>.<loader-module>:roster_dirs
    """,
)

The above setup script example mentions a loader module. here's an example of how <package>/<loader-module>.py it should look:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# Import python libs
import os

PKG_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))


def engines_dirs():
    """
    yield one path per parent directory of where engines can be found
    """
    yield os.path.join(PKG_DIR, "engines_1")
    yield os.path.join(PKG_DIR, "engines_2")


def fileserver_dirs():
    """
    yield one path per parent directory of where fileserver modules can be found
    """
    yield os.path.join(PKG_DIR, "fileserver")


def pillar_dirs():
    """
    yield one path per parent directory of where external pillar modules can be found
    """
    yield os.path.join(PKG_DIR, "pillar")


def returner_dirs():
    """
    yield one path per parent directory of where returner modules can be found
    """
    yield os.path.join(PKG_DIR, "returners")


def roster_dirs():
    """
    yield one path per parent directory of where roster modules can be found
    """
    yield os.path.join(PKG_DIR, "roster")