[Python-ideas] Idea: Lazy import statement

[Josiah Carlson]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:12 AM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Problem: You have a package containing a large number of
> classes, of which only a few are typically used by any
> given application.
>
> If you put each class into its own submodule, then
> client code is required to use a lot of tedious
> 'from foo.thingy import Thingy' statements to import
> the classes it wants to use. This also makes all the
> submodule names part of the API and makes it hard to
> rearrange the packaging without breaking code.
>
> If you try to flatten the namespace by importing all
> the classes into the top level module, you end up
> importing everything even if it won't be used.
>
> What's needed is a way of lazily importing them, so
> that the import won't actually happen unless the
> imported names are referenced.
>
> It's possible to hack something like that up now, but
> then tools such as py2app and py2exe, that try to find
> modules by statically examining the source looking for
> import statements, won't be able to accurately determine
> which modules are used. At best they'll think the
> whole package is used and incorporate all of it; at
> worst they'll miss it altogether.
>
> So I think it would be good to have a dedicated syntax
> for lazy imports, so the top-level foo package can say
> something like
>
>  from foo.thing lazily import Thing
>  from foo.stuff lazily import Stuff
>  ...
>
> Executing a lazy import statement adds an entry to a
> list of deferred imports attached to the module. Then,
> the first time the imported name is referenced, the
> import is performed and the name becomes an ordinary
> attribute thereafter.
>
> If py2exe et al are taught about lazy imports, they
> will then be able to determine exactly which submodules
> are used by an application and exclude the rest.

How is this mechanism supposed to behave in the presence of things like...

    # baz.py
    from foo lazy import bar

    def fcn():
        return bar.obj(...)

It would seem that py2exe, etc., would need to include the bar module
regardless of whether baz.fcn() was called in any particular
invocation of a program, and even if baz.fcn() was never called in any
invocation.

 - Josiah