[Python-Dev] zipimport.c broken with implicit namespace packages

[Phil Thompson]

On 3 Jan 2016, at 3:41 am, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 3:26 PM, <mike.romberg at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> --
> >>>>> "Brett" == Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> writes:
> 
>     > I opened
>     > https://bugs.python.org/issue25711 to specifically try to
>     > fix this issue once and for all and along the way modernize
>     > zipimport by rewriting it from scratch to be more
>     > maintainable
> 
>   Every time I read about impementing a custom loader:
> 
> https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.html
> 
>   I've wondered why python does not have some sort of virtual
> filesystem layer to deal with locating modules/packages/support
> files.   Virtual file systems seem like a good way to store data on a
> wide range of storage devices.
> 
> Yeah, but most devices already implement a *real* filesystem, so the only time the VFS would come in handy would be for zipfiles, where we already have a solution.

Just to point out that it would be nice to have an easier way to use something other that zipfiles. I have a need to exploit a different solution and have to patch the bootstrap code (because the zipfile support is handled as a special case). BTW the need is to create iOS and Android executables from frozen Python code.

Phil