[Python-Dev] Dropping init.py requirement for subpackages (original) (raw)

Donovan Baarda abo at minkirri.apana.org.au
Wed Apr 26 21:41:13 CEST 2006

Guido van Rossum wrote:

On 4/26/06, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 10:16 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:

So I have a very simple proposal: keep the init.py requirement for top-level pacakages, but drop it for subpackages. This should be a small change. I'm hesitant to propose anything new for Python 2.5, so I'm proposing it for 2.6; if Neal and Anthony think this would be okay to add to 2.5, they can do so. [...] I'd be -1 but the remote possibility of you being burned at the stake by your fellow Googlers makes me -0 :). I'm not sure I understand what your worry is.

I happen to be a Googler too, but I was a Pythonista first...

I'm -1 for minor mainly subjective reasons;

  1. explicit is better than implicit. I prefer to be explicit about what is and isn't a module. I have plenty of "doc" and "test" and other directories inside python module source tree's that I don't want to be python modules.

  2. It feels more consistant to always require it. /foo/ is a python package because it contains an init.py... so package /foo/bar/ should have one one too.

  3. It changes things for what feels like very little gain. I've never had problems with it, and don't find the import exception hard to diagnose.

Note that I think the vast majority of "newbie missing init.py" problems within google occur because people are missing init.py at the root of package import tree. This change would not not solve that problem.

It wouldn't surprise me if this change would introduce a slew of newbies complaining that "I have /foo on my PYTHONPATH, why can't I import foo/bar/" because they're forgotten the (now) rarely required init.py

-- Donovan Baarda

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