Model optional dependencies as extra dependency groups?

[BubuOT]

Hi @kellyjonbrazil,

we discussed optional dependencies previously in #537.
I was wondering if you'd be open to making jc's dependencies (ruamel.yaml, xmltodict, Pygments) actually optional on a packaging level? I.e. I'd imagining something like pip/uv pip install jc would install jc without these dependencies (or only dependencies which are necessary for jc to function at all, if there are any in the future) and something like pip install jc[full/all/standard] would give you jc + all optional dependencies, so that all parsers and optional features would be available. This could also be extended to have more extras for individual features, if anyone would want these.

There's precedence for this in i.e. fastapi, which has all not strictly necessary (but recommended) dependencies in a [standard] extra and even more optional dependencies in a [all] extra. (see https://github.com/fastapi/fastapi/blob/master/pyproject.toml#L58)

I see two benefits from this:

• downstream distributions could mark these dependencies as optional dependencies (in whatever way that's supported by various distributions) instead of assuming that these are required dependencies.
• when installing jc as a dependency of another project in a venv, this reduces your overall dependencies, if you don't use these particular features of jc. (i.e. it reduces download and installation size and less dependencies are less things to worry about in respect to security updates, etc.)
  Thoughts? :)

[kellyjonbrazil]

Hi - thanks for the suggestion. From my point of view the additional libraries are not really optional, but should be there for JC to be complete. I only allow removal of third party dependencies for corner cases, like systems with limited resources. 99% of the time the full package and dependencies should be installed, so I wouldn't want to change how most users install the package.

[BubuOT]

Hi, thanks for your reply. If this is not something you really want to support/encourage, than that's understandable. :)