[Python-Dev] Re: Christmas Wishlist

[Barry Warsaw]

On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 13:36, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> I think this ought to be a *global* flag rather than a per-module
> flag.  E.g. after setting
> 
>     sys.allow_relative_import = False
> 
> all imports anywhere would be interpreted as absolute imports.
> 
> This would mean you couldn't have some code that still uses relative
> imports, but the problem with the __future__ statement is that it
> seems so pointless: packages that only use absolute imports don't need
> it, and packages that use relative imports break if it is used.

You probably want something at the package level.  This may not be
feasible, but it seems like you want to be able to say, "this package
needs to allow relative imports for backwards compatibility".

-Barry