I have sketched out a possible start of a python-wide file-system specification https://github.com/martindurant/filesystem_spec
This came about from my work in some other (remote) file-systems implementations for python, particularly in the context of Dask. Since arrow also cares about both local files and, for example, hdfs, I thought that people on this list may have comments and opinions about a possible standard that we ought to converge on. I do not think that my suggestions so far are necessarily right or even good in many cases, but I want to get the conversation going. You will see that there are already some PRs and issues on the repo, please use liberally! Finally, if this project gathers steam, then the spec should be moved to a more prominent and standard location. Thanks, MD — Martin Durant martin.dur...@utoronto.ca