Import question

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:37:53 -0300, Andrew Degtiariov
<andrew.degtiariov at gmail.com> escribió:
> 2010/2/6 Gabriel Genellina <gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar>
>> En Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:21:47 -0300, Andrew Degtiariov
>> <andrew.degtiariov at gmail.com> escribió:
>>
>>
>>> Code of our project has split into several packages and we deploy the
>>> project using buildout.
>>> All worked fine until I need to dynamically inspect python modules.
>> Entirely by luck, I'd say :)
>>
>>
>>  ├───project.api.config
>>> │   ├───project
>>> │   │   └───api
>>> │   │       └───config
>>> │   │           └───settings
>>> │   └───project.api.config.egg-info
>>> ├───project.api.contacts
>>> │   ├───project
>>> │   │   └───api
>>> │   │       └───contacts
>>> │   │           ├───importer
>>> │   │           └───views
>>> │   └───project.api.contacts.egg-info
>>>

> If someone is interesting - __import__ works but imp doesn't.
> In my example:
>>>> m = __import__('project.api.config')
>>>> m
> <module 'project from
> 'c:\users\ad\project\src\project.api.contacts\project\__init__.pyc'>
>>>> m.api
> <module 'project.api from
> 'c:\users\ad\project\src\project.api.contacts\project\api\__init__.pyc'>
>>>> m.api.config
> <module 'project.api.config'
> from'c:\users\ad\project\src\project.api.config\project\api\config\__init__.pyc'>
>
> Please note that the m and m.api pointed to first installing package with
> namespace project.api but m.api.config have pointed to the proper file.
>
> And releasing code with several distributions it is one of goals of
> Distribute. And you might look to pypi for... zope. There is lot of  
> package
> which names starts from "zope."
> It's really convenient

Those are called namespace packages. Zope and Plone (ab)use them
extensively. The intended usage is to break up a big, monolithic package
[0] in parts that can be distributed independently. To implement a
namespace package, you need an empty __init__.py file with only these
lines [1]:

   from pkgutil import extend_path
__path__ = extend_path(__path__, __name__)

But think carefully if you really need namespace packages; they solve a
specific problem, aren't a general purpose technique. See [2] for a
discussion.

[0] Think of a huge behemoth with a "Z O P E" sign on both sides :)
[1] http://docs.python.org/library/pkgutil.html
[2] http://weblion.psu.edu/news/are-we-overusing-namespace-packages

-- 
Gabriel Genellina