[Python-ideas] Consider (one day) adding an inheritance order class precedence mechanism

[Neil Girdhar]

Sometimes I get MRO failures when defining classes.  For example, if

R < E, C
B < S, E
S < C
Z < B, R

Then Z cannot be instantiated because C precedes E in B and E precedes C in 
R.  The problem is that when the inheritance graph was topologically-sorted 
in B, the order was S, C, E.  It could just as easily have been S, E, C.  
So, one solution is to add C explicitly to B's base class list, but this is 
annoying because B might not care about C (it's an implementation detail of 
S).  It also means that if the hierarchy changes, a lot of these added 
extra base classes need to be fixed.

I propose adding a magic member to classes:

__precedes__ that is a list of classes.  So, the fix for the above problem 
would be to define E as follows:

class E:
    from whatever import C
    __precedes__ = [C]

Then, when topologically-sorting (so-called linearizing) the ancestor 
classes, Python can try to ensure that E precedes C when defining B.

Best,

Neil
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