[Python-Dev] Unloading modules (regrtest.py mystery)

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Ka-Ping Yee wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Tim Peters wrote:
> > "A fix" seems to amount to treating
> >
> > import M
> >
> > as if it were
> >
> > try:
> >     import M
> > except:
> >     if M in sys.modules:
> >         del sys.modules[M]
> >     raise
> 
> I remember suggesting exactly that some time ago (i think it was
> motivated at the time by the extreme pain that broken modules were
> causing for webserver-mode pydoc in its attempt to update loaded
> modules if the source files had changed on disk).
> 
> Guido rejected it because you can't guarantee that the refcount on M
> is 1 at the point where you attempt to 'del sys.modules[M]' above.
> (For example, some other module imported by M could have imported M
> again, and so hold a reference to it while M is running its startup
> commands.  This is why the entry is added to sys.modules before the
> body of M starts to run.)
> 
> He deemed the situation where M is loaded-but-missing-from-sys.modules
> to be even worse than for M to be left loaded-but-broken therein.  If
> you allow M to stay in sys.modules, then you can at least maintain the
> guarantee that there is a one-to-one association between loaded module
> names and loaded module objects.  If you remove M from sys.modules but
> it lingers in memory, referenced elsewhere, you lose even that -- there
> can be many modules loaded all with the same name and it's a nightmare.
> 
> The argument is compelling and i am forced to agree, but i still think
> that we should look for a better solution.  I'll ponder this and post
> any ideas i come up with.

How about only deleting it from sys.modules iff the ref count 
is 1 ?!

Note that you cannot currently remove extension modules that have 
failed to import correctly. Would be nice if we could come 
up with a reasonable way of unloading modules, but I guess this 
requires some hard PEP work...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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