unloading a module created with imp.new_module

[Patrick Stinson]

Basically, I have an app and am making it possible for the users to automate it by writing python scripts that run against the app's API. It includes PyQt5 widgets, a QScintilla editor, and a simple API for I/O. Apple’s app store is the plan.

Right now I create a new module with types.ModuleType(‘something’), then exec the code in the module’s dict. Then when the user saves the script again in my editor, it deletes all top-level references in the module’s dict that don’t belong to the core list: ['__spec__', '__name__', '__loader__', '__package__', '__doc__', '__builtins__’] before running exec again. 

So far this seems to effectively “delete” the old module and re-compile it with the updated source. For example I can create Qt Widgets on the module level and they are safely deleted when the script is saved.


> On Nov 23, 2014, at 5:56 PM, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com> wrote:
> 
> On 11/23/14 1:49 AM, Patrick Stinson wrote:
>> If I create a module with imp.new_module(name), how can I unload it so that all the references contained in it are set to zero and the module is deleted? deleting the reference that is returned doesn’t seem to do the job, and it’s not in sys.modules, so where is the dangling reference?
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
> 
> This sounds tricky, and possible very difficult to do properly.  Do you mind if I ask what the larger problem is?  Python might not be very good at having modules come and go as you want.
> 
> -- 
> Ned Batchelder, http://nedbatchelder.com
> 
> -- 
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

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