Robin> thanks; I'm still a bit puzzled as to the exact semantics. It Robin> just looks wrong. Is __all__ the only way to get things into the Robin> * version of import? Essentially, yes. If you want to just dispense with it __all__together (=:-o), you can textually replace __all__ with ___all__ in each of the standard library modules: cd /usr/local/lib/python2.1 for f in *.py ; do sed -e 's/___*all__/___all__/g' < $f > $f.tmp mv $f.tmp $f done Note that I didn't touch any files in directories under the basic Lib directory. Robin> Presumably HTTPConnection is being marked as a potential global Robin> in the compile phase. It has nothing to do with module compilation. The contents of __all__ are a static thing in the text of the .py file, and thusfar almost entirely due to me studying the inputs at hand and making a decision about what belonged and what didn't. Some python-dev people caught ommissions and added them before the 2.1 release. Other than that, the mistakes are all mine. I had some misgivings about the whole thing during the midst of the task and still do, but grumbled once and completed it. Skip