[Python-Dev] Pre-PEP: Redesigning extension modules

[Stefan Behnel]

*bump*

Does this sound like a viable solution?

Stefan


Stefan Behnel, 25.08.2013 14:36:
> Hi,
> 
> thanks for bringing this up. It clearly shows that there is more to this
> problem than I initially thought.
> 
> Let me just add one idea that your post gave me.
> 
> PJ Eby, 25.08.2013 06:12:
>> My "Importing" package offers lazy imports by creating module objects
>> in sys.modules that are a subtype of ModuleType, and use a
>> __getattribute__ hook so that trying to use them fires off a reload()
>> of the module.
> 
> I wonder if this wouldn't be an approach to fix the reloading problem in
> general. What if extension module loading, at least with the new scheme,
> didn't return the module object itself and put it into sys.modules but
> created a wrapper that redirects its __getattr__ and __setattr__ to the
> actual module object? That would have a tiny performance impact on
> attribute access, but I'd expect that to be negligible given that the usual
> reason for the extension module to exist is that it does non-trivial stuff
> in whatever its API provides. Reloading could then really create a
> completely new module object and replace the reference inside of the wrapper.
> 
> That way, code that currently uses "from extmodule import xyz" would
> continue to see the original version of the module as of the time of its
> import, and code that just did "import extmodule" and then used attribute
> access at need would always see the current content of the module as it was
> last loaded. I think that, together with keeping module global state in the
> module object itself, would nicely fix both cases.
> 
> Stefan