[Python-Dev] Exposing pkguitl's import emulation (was Re: [Python-checkins] r85538 - python/branches/py3k/Doc/library/pkgutil.rst)

[Georg Brandl]

Am 19.10.2010 17:24, schrieb P.J. Eby:
> At 08:03 AM 10/18/2010 +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>>I'm a little dubious about exposing these officially. They're mainly a
>>hack to get some parts of the standard library working (e.g. runpy) in
>>the absence of full PEP 302 support in the imp module, not really
>>something we want to encourage anyone else to use (and yes, they
>>should probably have underscores in their names, but we missed that
>>when the various private implementations scattered around the stdlib
>>were consolidated in pkgutil).
> 
> Well, my intention at least was that they should be documented and 
> released; it's the documenting part I didn't get around to.  ;-)
> 
> Of course, this was also pre-importlib; were we starting the work 
> today, the obvious thing to do would be to expose the Python 
> implementations of the relevant objects.

I don't care much either way; however I don't really like when there are
public APIs (i.e. non-underscore-prefixed globals in a non-underscore-
prefixed module) that aren't documented, because it is confusing to
developers who don't know if they can use it or not.  (See re.scanner.)

The best thing is probably to let Brett (Hello Brett!) determine how
much of it can be replaced by importlib, and add a note to that effect
to the pkgutil docs.

cheers,
Georg

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