@bernatgabor It’s as @uranusjr mentioned. Here are the notes on the future of editable installs from the Packaging Summit at PyCon North America 2019. They were previously in this Google Doc section and I moved them to that packaging-problems issue comment.
There were also discussions in Pip 19.1 and installing in editable mode with pyproject.toml (mostly before the summit) and in Specification of editable installation - #40 by pganssle – that is a direct link to a comment where @pganssle indicates why he thinks there ought to be a proof of concept before we work to standardize stuff with a PEP.
Am also pinging @techalchemy since he was planning to be part of the effort as well, and @takluyver since Daniel mentioned Flit.
Currently @uranusjr @pradyunsg and @pf_moore are committed to spending a fair amount of time on the pip resolver project, which I am the project manager on. Tzu-Ping and Paul will be done with that commitment in probably June, but Pradyun will still have some committed time on this project till the end of December (not going to go into complicated “we have 2 funders and different timelines for different parts of the project” details now). So that’s going to affect their ability to volunteer to work on editable installs. If there’s a specific deadline someone is trying to meet to ship better editable installs, then it would be good to know that.
If anyone knows a company who would like to sponsor this work, please speak up and talk with them (see the entry about editable installs on the Fundable Packaging Projects page).
And if anyone would like to help write some grant proposals to get funding through the Packaging Working Group for a proper push on this work, I’d love that! Message me - I can help you get started. In about two months, for instance, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s next Essential Open Source Software for Science funding opens for applications. And applications for Mozilla Open Source Support funding can be submitted at any time.