[Python-Dev] New relative import issue

[Scott Dial]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On 9/21/06, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>> I think it goes further than that -- each module should
>> (potentially) have its own unique view of the module
>> namespace, defined at the time the module is installed,
>> that can't be disturbed by anything that any other module
>> does.
> 
> Well, maybe. But there's also the requirement that if packages A and B
> both import C, they should get the same C. Having multiple versions of
> the same package loaded simultaneously sounds like a recipe for
> disaster.

I have exactly this scenario in my current codebase for a server. It was 
absolutely necessary for me to update a module in Twisted because all 
other solutions I could come up with were less desirable. Either I send 
my patch upstream and wait (can't wait), or I fork out another version 
and place it at the top of sys.path (this seems ok). Except an even 
better solution is to maintain my own subset of Twisted, because I am 
localized to a particularly small corner of the codebase. I can continue 
to use upstream updates to the rest of Twisted without any fussing about 
merging changes and so forth. And if Twisted was allowed to decide how 
it saw its own world, then I would have to go back to maintaining my own 
complete branch.

While I don't strictly need to be able to do this, I wanted to at least 
raise my hand and say, "I abuse this facet of the current import 
mechanism."

-- 
Scott Dial
scott at scottdial.com
scodial at cs.indiana.edu