[Python-Dev] __all__ in urllib

[Jack Jansen]

The __all__ that was added to urllib recently causes me quite a lot of grief 
(This is "me the application programmer", not "me the macpython maintainer"). 
I have a module that extends urllib, and whereas what used to work was a 
simple "from urllib import *" plus a few override functions, but with this 
__all__ stuff that doesn't work anymore.

I started fixing up __all__, but then I realised that this is probably not the 
right solution. "from xxx import *" can really be used for two completely 
distinct cases. One is as a convenience, where the user doesn't want to prefix 
all references with xxx. but the other distinct case is in a module that is an 
extension of another module. In this second case you would really want to 
bypass this whole __all__ mechanism.

I think that the latter is a valid use case for import *, and that there 
should be some way to get this behaviour.
--
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