M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
BTW, while hacking along I found a few things that might be worth discussing w/r to a general import hook scheme:
Currently, the imputil apporach uses a simple chaining technique. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow inspecting the chain for already loaded hooks, so the same type of hook could be loaded more than once.
Also, there are at least two types of hooks:
hooks that redirect the import to some other data source
hooks that modify the way modules are searched
Since the first variant may well also be suited to used by the second, the simple chaining method probably won't be powerful enough to handle it.
I think what we really need is a set of register/deregister APIs + some framework to differentiate between the two hook types (and possibly other variants).
Another quirk that I think needs fixing:
When I issues an import:
import mx.DateTime
the whole import is handled by the importer installed at the start of the import. It is not possible to install a different importer e.g. in mx/__init__.py to handle the rest of the import (in this case the import of subpackage DateTime). I think that the importer should honor the __importer__ function (this is set by imputil) if present to let it continue the import of subsequent elements in the dotted name.
Aside: Perhaps this is getting too technical for this list... should I start an egroups mailing list for defining a new and more flexible import mechanism ?