[Python-Dev] Think a dead import finding script would be handy?

[Neal Norwitz]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Georg Brandl <g.brandl at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Brett Cannon schrieb:
>>> After Christian mentioned how we could speed up interpreter start-up
>>> by removing some dead imports he found, I decided to write up a quick
>>> script that generates the AST for a source file and (very roughly)
>>> tries to find imports that are never used. People think it's worth
>>> tossing into Tools, even if it is kind of rough? Otherwise I might
>>> toss it into the sandbox or make a quick Google code project out of
>>> it.
>>>
>>> Regardless, one interesting side-effect of the script is that beyond
>>> finding some extraneous imports in various places, it also found some
>>> holes in __all__. I have the script look for the definition of __all__
>>> and consider an import used if it is listed there.
>>
>> pylint already finds unused imports. It finds tons of other, relatively
>> useless, stuff in the default configuration, but I'm sure it can be
>> coaxed into only showing unused imports too.
>>
>
> Does anyone ever run pylint over the stdlib on occasion?

I usually run pychecker (which also finds unused imports and a whole
lot more) before releases.  I typically wait for things to settle down
(ie, well into beta).

n