Error when deleting and reimporting subpackages

[Matthew Brett]

On Monday, August 22, 2011 12:06:44 PM UTC-7, Stephen Hansen wrote:
> On 8/22/11 11:51 AM, Matthew Brett wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I recently ran into this behavior:
> > 
> >>>> import sys
> >>>> import apkg.subpkg
> >>>> del sys.modules['apkg']
> >>>> import apkg.subpkg as subpkg
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> > AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'subpkg'
> > 
> > where 'apkg' and 'subpkg' comprise empty __init__.py files to simplify the example.
> > 
> > It appears then, that importing a subpackage, then deleting the containing package from sys.modules, orphans the subpackage in an unfixable state. 
> > 
> > I ran into this because the nose testing framework does exactly this kind of thing when loading test modules, causing some very confusing errors and failures.
> > 
> > Is this behavior expected?
> 
> Yes. Doing an import of "apkg.subpkg" results in more then just "test1"
> being cached in sys.modules, and you're removing half of that so leaving
> Python in a weird state.
> 
> You also want to del sys.modules["apkg.subpkg"], then you'll be able to
> re-import apkg.subpkg. I.e:
> 
> Python 2.7.1 (r271:86882M, Nov 30 2010, 10:35:34)
> [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5664)] on darwin
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> import sys
> >>> import test1.test2
> >>> del sys.modules['test1']
> >>> del sys.modules['test1.test2']
> >>> import test1.test2 as test2
> >>>

Yes, sorry, I should have mentioned that I explored these kind of variations.

I think I see that there isn't an obvious way for del sys.modules['apkg'] to know to delete or modify 'apkg.subpkg', because sys.modules is just a dict.

However, I could imagine the import machinery being able to recognize that 'apkg.subpkg' is broken, and re-import it without error.

Is that reasonable?

Best,

Matthew