What is the meaning of type = "console" in scripts example

[evilhamsterman]

I the pyproject.toml documentation where is talks about making scripts dependent on optional extras https://python-poetry.org/docs/pyproject/#scripts it give the example

[tool.poetry.scripts]
devtest = { reference = "mypackage:test.run_tests", extras = ["test"], type = "console" }

I get what reference and extras are for, but there is no documentation for what type means. It appears appears it was added in commit 98b8ffb by @edgarrmondragon updating from the deprecated callable to reference two months ago. But nothing about type

[dimbleby]

https://python-packaging.readthedocs.io/en/latest/command-line-scripts.html

[evilhamsterman]

@dimbleby I think I should clarify, I believe the documentation needs to be updated because there's an option that is tossed out in an example but is not documented in any.

A link to an unofficial document about making python packages that hasn't been updated in 8 years isn't very helpful. There's been significant changes in python and packaging since then, including an official packaging document site packaging.python.org.

If type="console" is supposed to be analogous to console_scripts then that needs to be documented because console != console_scripts how is someone supposed to know that they need to put console there especially since it also appears to be optional, or at least it wasn't in the example for the last two years. What about different options, which according to the official packaging site https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/distributing-packages-using-setuptools/?highlight=scripts#id52, https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/entry-points is either just scripts which is recommended against, or gui_scripts, should we put type=scripts or type=gui_scripts, should we strip scripts and just put gui, In that case what about scripts? How do the other options affect other settings, from what I can tell from the code it looks like if type !=console then it doesn't bother installing extras, but what if you need extras for your gui_script? Are other options even supported, if not why is type even needed?

[dimbleby]

merge requests improving the docs are usually welcome, please go ahead

[evilhamsterman]

I'd be happy to provide a PR, if I knew the answer which is why I'm asking for someone who does to provide the information.