v0.18.0

v0.18.0

This minor update removes the runtime requirement on the setuptools package
in favor of equivalent functionality that is in the standard library from
python version 3.8 and onward.
For python versions 3.7 and lower, we introduce the common
importlib-metadata backport package.

Additional updates may be found below.

Updates / New Features

Dependencies

• Remove dependency on setuptool's pkg_resources module.
  Taking the stance of bullet number 5 in from Python's Packaging User-guide with
  regards to getting this package's version.
  The "needs to be installed" requirement from before is maintained.

• Added dependency on the importlib-metadata backport package for
  installations in environments that use python version less-than 3.8.

• Added ipython (and appropriately supporting version of jedi) as
  development dependencies.
  Minimum versioning is set to support python 3.6 (current versions follow
  NEP 29 and thus require python 3.7+).

Documentation

• Clarified plugin implementation entrypoint example to include setuptools
  setuptools.setup() function and setup.cfg file.

• Revisions from proof-reading.

Plugins

• Entry-point discovery functionality now uses importlib_metadata /
  importlib.metadata as appropriate for the version of python being used.

Testing

• Added terminal-output coverage report in the standard pytest config in the
  pyproject.toml file.