[Python-Dev] zipimport & import hooks (original) (raw)

Moore, Paul Paul.Moore@atosorigin.com
Fri, 6 Dec 2002 15:33:35 -0000

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

but what if I want to do fruity things? that's the whole point here: if the framework delegates imports to objects in the sys.path list, it's dead simple to experiment.

for some reason, all counter-proposals seem to be obsessed with control ("don't do that" in lower or upper case, "don't write code that I may =3D find ugly", "we'll break your programs in the future if you do that", "if you cannot think of a string representation, you're not qualified to write custom importers", "all your ZIP archives must use the same name", etc). why are we spending this much time and effort on making things hard to use? if I know that I can access all modules needed by my program through a five-line custom importer, why do I have to invent a string naming scheme, make sure that scheme is unique so no future version of Python may mistake it for a builtin importer, register the importer using some function that I can remember the name and signature of, and pray I've understood the semantics.

Having listened to the arguments, and tried a few things out myself with iu.py, I now agree with this. Importer objects on sys.path are very easy to use, and nice and clean. I have no real code myself which will break - and I concede that if others do, they can speak for themselves.

In fact, I've gone to the other extreme. I think I'd rather see general objects on sys.path than string subclasses. Basically, the breakage happens sooner if someone does assume that sys.path items are strings.

I'll drop out of any more discussion on this issue now... Paul.