[issue15502] Meta path finders and path entry finders are different, but share an ABC

[Brett Cannon]

Brett Cannon added the comment:

I guess the question is how extensive do we want this cache validation to go? Do we think that only path entry finders stored in sys.path_importer_cache will have stuff to be cleared, or do we think stuff on sys.meta_path or sys.path_hooks will have things that need to get cleared as well? The more I think about it, the more I want to  generalize this to the point of sys.meta_path and then having PathFinder handle sys.path_hooks and sys.path_importer_cache. That stays in line with import not caring about sys.path, etc. and it really just being some cruft left over from Python 2.

Regardless, though, I would not define invalidate_caches() on Finder and instead define it separately on PathEntryFinder and MetaPathFinder. It's new in 3.3 so it doesn't need to be on Finder for backwards-compatibility, and it isn't inherent to finders. Plus if Finder goes away we will have to push it up to the other ABCs anyway.

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue15502>
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