Opinions, please, on PEP 8 and local, 3rd party imports

[Simon Forman]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:50 PM, Philip Semanchuk <philip at semanchuk.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> Our project uses some libraries that were written by 3rd parties (i.e. not
> us). These libraries fit into a single Python file and live in our source
> tree alongside other modules we've written. When our app is distributed,
> they'll be included in the installation. In other words, they're not
> prerequisites that we'll make the user install, and they won't live in
> site-packages.
>
> For example, we use configobj from
> <http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/configobj.py>, and I think Beautiful
> Soup can be installed as a single file too, although we're not using that
> particular module.
>
> PEP 8 <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/> says the following:
>
>   Imports should be grouped in the following order:
>   1. standard library imports
>   2. related third party imports
>   3. local application/library specific imports
>
>
> I'm not sure in which category to place local, 3rd-party modules like
> configobj.
>
> Clearly, they belong in category 3 since they're local.
>
> Clearly, they also belong in category 2 since they're 3rd party modules, and
> explicitly labeling an imported module as "this is code we didn't write" is
> useful. But I've always reserved category 2  for external libraries (e.g.
> numpy, wxPython, Twisted, PIL, etc.).
>
> Clearly, the best choice is category 2.5?
>
> In your Pythonic opinion, should 3rd-party modules that live alongside
> homegrown code be listed in import category 2 or 3?
>
> Thanks
> Philip
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

2.5 +1

;]