[Python-Dev] zipimport & import hooks

[Jack Jansen]

On vrijdag, dec 6, 2002, at 13:52 Europe/Amsterdam, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> Just van Rossum wrote:
>
>> It seems the majority doesn't like non-strings on sys.path, which to 
>> me is
>> understandable, especially if you take PYTHONPATH into consideration. 
>> Let's try
>> to focus on that.
>
> Has anyone presented any hard data, or are people just guessing?  As 
> far
> as I can tell, I'm the only one here who has posted fragile code from 
> a real
> shipping product -- and I still believe it's a bogus argument.

There are 3 distinct types of problems in Mac/Lib.
1. macresource locates .rsrc files on sys.path. I think this is a 
similar use case Fredrik presented: finding what is essentially a data 
file on sys.path. This is going to be a real problem if everything is 
packed into a zipfile.
2. buildtools loops over sys.path looking for a specific module (using 
os.path calls). This is a problem, but these uses can be converted to 
case (3).
3. buildtools (in another place) and bundlebuilder use imp.find_module 
to find modules and then proceed to do things like use the resulting 
pathname (like copying the file found). These will probably fail if 
there are zipfiles on sys.path, but at least there is a chance of 
fixing them. imp.find_module should return a recognizable magic cookie 
in stead of the pathname for zipfiles (and, later, for any other 
non-filesystem importers). I think we have to leave it at "magic 
cookie" and declare this Somebody Else's Problem, every time I try to 
think of functionality to put in the cookie I end up with something 
resembling a complete virtual filesystem interface. As a partial fix 
the file object returned by find_module could be an object that would 
"work".
--
- Jack Jansen        <Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com>        
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman -