[Import-SIG] One last try: "virtual packages"

[Barry Warsaw]

It's a very interesting idea that is worth exploring.  A few things come to
mind:

- Under this scheme it's possible for names in a module to "suddenly" appear.
  E.g. I could install packages that extend existing top level modules like
  `time` or `string`.  This might be a good thing in that it gives 3rd party
  folks a more natural place to add things, but it could also open up a
  land-grab type collision if lots of people want to publish their packages as
  subpackage extensions to existing modules.

- It's unfortunate that this will be more difficult to back port to Python 2.

- It sounds like it will be more difficult to have a single code base that
  supports Python 2, Python3 <= 3.2, and Python 3.3.  This is because
  __init__.py is required in the first two, but does the wrong thing (I think
  ;) in a post-PEP 382 Python 3.3.  Adding a .pyp file that's ignored in
  anything that doesn't support PEP 382 would make it easier to support
  multiple Pythons.

- This should make vendor packaging tools happy because it does seem to
  eliminate file collisions (duplicate directories don't matter).

Let's see the PEP!
-Barry
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