On July 26 I reported that the new xml package in the standard library collides with and overrides the xml package from the xml-sig that may be installed in site-packages. This is still the case. The new package does not have the same functionality as the one in site-packages, and hence my application (and others relying on similar functionality) gets an import error. I understood that it was planned that the new library xml package would check for the site-package version, and transparently hand over to it if it existed. It's not really an option to remove/rename the xml package in the std lib, or to break existing xml-based code...
Of course, this might be fixed by 2.0b1, or is it a feature that will be frozen out <wry smile>?
Fred's response was: " I expect we'll be making the package in site-packages an extension provider for the xml package in the standard library. I'm planning to discuss this issue at today's PythonLabs meeting."
I remember our group discussion about this. What's currently implemented is what we decided there, based upon (Fred's representation of) what the XML-sig wanted. So you don't like this either, right? I believe there are two conflicting desires here: (1) the standard XML package by the core should be named simply "xml"; (2) you want the old XML-sig code (which lives in a package named "xml" but installed in site-packages) to override the core xml package. I don't think that's possible -- at least not without a hack that's too ugly to accept. You might be able to get the old XML-sig code to override the core xml package by creating a symlink named _xmlplus to it in site-packages though. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)