upath.core: deprecate _protocol_dispatch=False

README.md

@@ -602,25 +602,28 @@ class MyProtoPath(UPath):
         return args, protocol, storage_options
 ```
 
-#### Stopping UPath's subclass dispatch mechanism
+#### Extending UPath's API interface
 
-There are cases for which you want to disable the protocol dispatch mechanism of
-the `UPath.__new__` constructor. For example if you want to extend the class API
-of your `UPath` implementation, and use it as the base class for other, directly
-instantiated subclasses. Together with other customization options this can be a
-useful feature. Please be aware that in this case all protocols are handled with
-the default implementation in UPath. Please always feel free to open an issue in
-the issue tracker to discuss your use case. We're happy to help with finding the
-most maintainable solution.
+If you want to extend the class API
+of your `UPath` implementation, it's recommended to subclass
+`upath.extensions.ProxyUPath`. It's a thin proxy layer around
+the public methods and attributes of a UPath instance.
 
 ```python
-class ExtraUPath(UPath):
-    _protocol_dispatch = False  # disable the registry return an ExtraUPath
+from upath.extensions import ProxyUPath
+
+class ExtraUPath(ProxyUPath):
 
     def some_extra_method(self) -> str:
-        return "hello world"
+        return f"hello world {self.name}"
+
+e0 = ExtraUPath("s3://bucket/foo.txt")
+e1 = ExtraUPath("memory://bar/baz.txt")
 
-assert ExtraUPath("s3://bucket/file.txt").some_extra_method() == "hello world"
+assert e0.some_extra_method() == "hello world foo.txt"
+assert isinstance(e0, ExtraUPath)
+assert e1.some_extra_method() == "hello world baz.txt"
+assert isinstance(e1, ExtraUPath)
 ```
 
 ## Migration Guide
@@ -729,6 +732,12 @@ path = UPath("memory:///file.txt")
 os.remove(path)  # TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike, not MemoryPath
 ```
 
+#### Extending UPath via `_protocol_dispatch=False`
+
+If you previously used `_protocol_dipatch=False` to enable extension of the
+UPath API, we now recommend to subclass `upath.extensions.ProxyUPath`. See
+the example in the main docs.
+
 ### migrating to `v0.2.0`
 
 ### _FSSpecAccessor subclasses with custom filesystem access methods

upath/core.py

@@ -337,6 +337,13 @@ def __new__(
             #
             # THIS IS DEPRECATED!
             # Use upath.extensions.ProxyUPath to extend the UPath API
+            warnings.warn(
+                f"{cls.__name__}._protocol_dispatch = False is deprecated and"
+                " will be removed in future universal_pathlib versions."
+                " To extend the UPath API, subclass upath.extensions.ProxyUPath",
+                DeprecationWarning,
+                stacklevel=2,
+            )
             upath_cls = cls
 
         if issubclass(upath_cls, cls):

upath/tests/test_extensions.py

@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 import pytest
 
+from upath import UPath
 from upath.extensions import ProxyUPath
 from upath.implementations.local import FilePath
 from upath.implementations.memory import MemoryPath
@@ -53,3 +54,14 @@ def write_bytes_reversed(self, value):
 
     r.parent.joinpath("file2").write_bytes_reversed(b"dlrow olleh")
     assert b.joinpath("file2").read_bytes() == b"hello world"
+
+
+def test_protocol_dispatch_deprecation_warning():
+
+    class MyPath(UPath):
+        _protocol_dispatch = False
+
+    with pytest.warns(DeprecationWarning, match="_protocol_dispatch = False"):
+        a = MyPath(".", protocol="memory")
+
+    assert isinstance(a, MyPath)