[Python-Dev] requirements for moving __import__ over to importlib?

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Tue Feb 7 23:17:38 CET 2012


On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 15:24, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> Brett, thanks for persevering on importlib!  Given how complicated imports
> are
> in Python, I really appreciate you pushing this forward.  I've been knee
> deep
> in both import.c and importlib at various times. ;)
>
> On Feb 07, 2012, at 03:07 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:
>
> >One is maintainability. Antoine mentioned how if change occurs everyone is
> >going to have to be able to fix code  in importlib, and that's the point!
> I
> >don't know about the rest of you but I find Python code easier to work
> with
> >than C code (and if you don't you might be subscribed to the wrong mailing
> >list =). I would assume the ability to make changes or to fix bugs will be
> >a lot easier with importlib than import.c. So maintainability should be
> >easier when it comes to imports.
>
> I think it's *really* critical that importlib be well-documented.  Not just
> its API, but also design documents (what classes are there, and why it's
> decomposed that way), descriptions of how to extend and subclass, maybe
> even
> examples for doing some typical hooks.  Maybe even a guided tour or
> tutorial
> for people digging into importlib for the first time.
>

That's fine and not difficult to do.


>
> >So, that is the positives. What are the negatives? Performance, of course.
>
> That's okay.  Get it complete, right, and usable first and then unleash the
> Pythonic hoards to bang on performance.
>
> >IOW I really do not look forward to someone saying "importlib is so much
> >slower at importing a module containing ``pass``" when (a) that never
> >happens, and (b) most programs do not spend their time importing but
> >instead doing interesting work.
>
> Identifying the use cases are important here.  For example, even if it
> were a
> lot slower, Mailman wouldn't care (*I* might care because it takes longer
> to
> run my test, but my users wouldn't).  But Bazaar or Mercurial users would
> care
> a lot.
>

Right, which is why I'm looking for some agreed upon, concrete benchmark I
can use which isn't fluff.

-Brett


>
> -Barry
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