[Python-Dev] requirements for moving import over to importlib? (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu Feb 9 02:43:02 CET 2012


On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:28 AM, PJ Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:

The main two reasons you wouldn't want imports to always be lazy are:

1. Changing sys.path or other parameters between the import statement and the actual import 2. ImportErrors are likewise deferred until point-of-use, so conditional importing with try/except would break.

  1. Module level code may have non-local side effects (e.g. installing codecs, pickle handlers, atexit handlers)

A white-listing based approach to lazy imports would let you manage all those issues without having to change all the code that actually does the imports.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia



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