Graham Wideman
Exactly what variants of arguments are possible, and what are their effects? Does http://docs.python.org/dev/library/functions#__import__ help? Does http://docs.python.org/dev/library/importlib ?
Well somewhat overkill -- because the matter of interest was args for from... and import, while the docs you mention are for more complicated underlying functions. (Interesting nonetheless.)
Current docs are unclear on points such as: -- is __init__.py needed on subpackage directories? Yes, it always has. I think there was some discussion about removing them in py3k, but this was rejected. I came to same conclusion.. but have seen it described otherwise (in at least one book), so good to state this explicitly.
-- the __all__ variable: Does it act generally to limit visibility of a module or package's attributes, or does pertain only to the 'from...import *' statement? Both.
I'm pretty sure that's not correct -- pretty sure that __all__ only specifies what's included in from...import *, and does not prevent access via from...import specific_attrib. But I may have tested incorrectly.
Seriously misleading discussion of .pth files. [snip] Agreed.
Cool -- I think it's well worth fixing this area for sure!
In addsitepackages(), the library directory for Windows (the else clause) is shown as lower-case 'lib' instead of 'Lib'. I don’t see any else clause in the 2.7 or 3.3 code. Otherwise you’re right.
Sorry, the lowecase 'lib' issue is in getsitepackages()... if sys.platform in(...) ... else:... sitepackages.append(os.path.join(prefix, "lib", "site-packages"))
sys Could helpfully point to a discussion of the typical items to be found in sys.path under normal circumstances Hm, this would be very platform-specific. What use cases would that help?
It would demystify how python already knows how to find various things under vanilla circumstances.
'Installing Python Modules' document "Windows has no concept of a user’s home directory, " and so on. The author probably meant that there was no $HOME environment variable, ~ shortcut and all that.
Fair enough, but in actuality there *is* a user-specific location (on Windows) examined by site.py, which is in %APPDATA%\Python\.
For Windows suggests 'prefix' (default: C:\Python) as an installation directory. This is indeed one of the possible 'site-package' directories, but surely it is deprecated in favor of C:\Python\Lib\site-packages, which this section does not mention. Don’t confuse the prefix and the install dir. The directory for Python modules is computed as prefix + Lib/site-packages.
Currently, under "Alternate installation: Windows (the prefix scheme)", it says: python setup.py install --prefix="\Temp\Python" to install modules to the \Temp\Python directory on the current drive. Does this really mean "install modules to \Temp\Python\Lib\site-packages"? (And as a side point, surely installing under the Temp directory is a strange location to pick for an example?)
That was my initial feeback; I think I’ve covered all of your points. Looking forward!
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