[Distutils] extensions in packages

[Greg Ward]

[I'm going to try to yank this thread over from PSA-members,
 which should have been done *long* ago!]

[on psa-members, Michel Sanner opined:]
> I do not think that trying to bend over bacakwards to circumevent this
> "limitation" is the right way to proceed .. unless changing the import
> mechanism in Python itself is something that would be extremely difficult to
> do.

I agree that a change to the import mechanism is in order.  My
understanding (from another one of those office-hallway conversations
with Fred) is that it would be very sensible to add a package's
platform-dependent directory to the package's __path__ attribute.  No
frobbing of sys.path is necessary, and thus no danger of stupid name
conflicts in extension modules that are supposed to be buried deep in
some package structure.

Perhaps imputil.py can help us in the playing around stage; I'm not
familiar with it, though, so I'll refrain from further comment.

        Greg

-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                    gward@cnri.reston.va.us
Corporation for National Research Initiatives    
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