PEP 382 Sprint

• Silver Spring, Maryland USA 21-Jun-2011 2000UTC

Attendees:

• Erik Bray
• Jason Coombs
• Michael Droettboom
• Eric Smith
• Barry Warsaw
• Steve Waterbury

Bitbucket clone: https://bitbucket.org/embray/pep-382-sprint

Tasks

• review Martin's branch hg clone http://hg.python.org/features/pep-382

  • look for reference counting issues

  • other initialization issues (*foo = NULL)

• do we have sufficient test coverage?

  • top-level non-trivial init.py

  • various reload scenarios

  • both __init__.py and .pth file exists

  • multiple .pth files in the same namespace package directory

  • .pth files that contain path names: do they set __path__ correctly?

  • is package.__path__ set correctly? must contain one *, at the beginning

  • test that load_module_with_path() (pep 302 loader) gets called correctly

  • test AttributeError when that's missing

• is importlib is covered?

• pull down 3rd party pep 302 loader and see if/how it's broken
• refactor import.c to yank out anything that can be written as a 302 loader?
  • --e.g. zip import-- Already done, but zipimport needs to support PEP-382
  • load-from-file could just be a PEP 302 loader
  • could land independently (but need to go through python-dev)
  • does this really make our lives easier?
• attempt a merge of mvl's branch to trunk
• figure out build problems on windows (jaraco)

• test_imp gives one failure on fedora (make sure imp module has been updated) - fixed

• stylistic cleansing of import.c
  • tests against 0 vs. NULL
  • mispellings

  • should LBYL on AttributeError in find_path

PEP Questions

• Clarify what happens when a directory contains both an __init__.py and a .pth file

• PEP should clarify what the impact of the PEP is on existing namespace packages (i.e. those with magic __init__.py files

• Do import statements in .pth files get ignored or does it raise an error?

• Impact of PEP on setuptools/packaging/distutils*

• Use case for extending existing .pth file syntax (minus import support)? I.e why are non-* lines in the .pth files added to path? And should these really be called .pth files? At least clarify the PEP!

Action Items

"It's all so freaking big we can never make any progress on it" - ES

Finish off PEP 302:

• Jason created a bitbucket clone for import.c refactoring

• Eric to experiment zipping the stdlib and delete the Lib dir by sys.path hacking, does Python still work?
• Isolate a path loader to match zip importer perhaps refactored from importlib
• Add this loader to the front of path_hooks and see if stdlib can be imported
• Rip out the stuff out of import.c that's not associated with calling path_hooks
• Benchmarking, is the Python version good enough? If so, who needs C?
• If not, make a C version of the loader

In parallel:

• Complete the PEP 382 tests identified above
• Clarify open PEP 382 questions
• Rewrite zipimport in Python?
• create a sub-mailing list on python.org