[issue19468] Relax the type restriction on reloaded modules

[Eric Snow]

New submission from Eric Snow:

The first thing that importlib.reload() does is to verify that the passed module is an instance of types.ModuleType (Lib/importlib/__init__.py:107).  This check seems unnecessary to me.  We really don't have a functional need for the check (that I know of).  Furthermore, there has been at least one serious proposal recently that suggested using custom module types.

The only benefit that I can think of to the type check is it makes the failure more clear when someone tries to "reload" an attribute in a module (thinking just the attribute will get reloaded!).  However, does that matter all that much now that reload() is not a builtin (ergo less likely to get misused very often)?

I'm not invested in removing these 2 lines (or at least loosening the restriction).  I've brought it up simply because it keeps staring me in the face lately. :-)  If anyone has any objections, I'll drop it (at least it will be recorded here in the tracker).  That said, I'm glad to remove the restriction otherwise.

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components: Library (Lib)
messages: 201874
nosy: brett.cannon, eric.snow, ncoghlan
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Relax the type restriction on reloaded modules
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.4

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue19468>
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