Project organization and import

[Martin Unsal]

I'm using Python for what is becoming a sizeable project and I'm
already running into problems organizing code and importing packages.
I feel like the Python package system, in particular the isomorphism
between filesystem and namespace, doesn't seem very well suited for
big projects. However, I might not really understand the Pythonic way.
I'm not sure if I have a specific question here, just a general plea
for advice.

1) Namespace. Python wants my namespace heirarchy to match my
filesystem heirarchy. I find that a well organized filesystem
heirarchy for a nontrivial project will be totally unwieldy as a
namespace. I'm either forced to use long namespace prefixes, or I'm
forced to use "from foo import *" and __all__, which has its own set
of problems.

1a) Module/class collision. I like to use the primary class in a file
as the name of the file. However this can lead to namespace collisions
between the module name and the class name. Also it means that I'm
going to be stuck with the odious and wasteful syntax foo.foo
everywhere, or forced to use "from foo import *".

1b) The Pythonic way seems to be to put more stuff in one file, but I
believe this is categorically the wrong thing to do in large projects.
The moment you have more than one developer along with a revision
control system, you're going to want files to contain the smallest
practical functional blocks. I feel pretty confident saying that "put
more stuff in one file" is the wrong answer, even if it is the
Pythonic answer.

2) Importing and reloading. I want to be able to reload changes
without exiting the interpreter. This pretty much excludes "from foo
import *", unless you resort to this sort of hack:

http://www.python.org/search/hypermail/python-1993/0448.html

Has anyone found a systematic way to solve the problem of reloading in
an interactive interpreter when using "from foo import *"?


I appreciate any advice I can get from the community.

Martin