[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

[Eli Bendersky]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 07:10, Fred Drake <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The initial proposal of changing *the stdlib
>> import facade* for xml.etree.ElementTree to use the C accelerator
>> (_elementtree) by default.
>
> I guess this is one source of confusion: what are you referring to an
> an "import façade"?  When I look in Lib/xml/etree/, I see the ElementTree,
> ElementPath, and ElementInclude modules, and a wrapper for cElementTree's
> extension module.
>
> There isn't any sort of façade for ElementTree; are you proposing to add
> one, perhaps in xml.etree/__init__.py?


AFAICS ElementPath is a helper used by ElementTree, and cElementTree
has one of its own. It's not documented for stand-alone use.
ElementInclude also isn't documented and doesn't appear to be used
anywhere.

The facade can be added to xml/etree/ElementTree.py since that's the
only documented module. It can attempt to do:

from _elementtree import *

(which is what cElementTree.py) does, and on failure, just go on doing
what it does now.

Eli