Re: PEP 420: Implicit Namespace Packages

On May 05, 2012, at 01:14 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

>On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 12:34 AM, Barry Warsaw <[email protected]> wrote:
>>  * Explicitly leave the assignment of __file__ to the loader.
>>  * Allow loaders to not set __file__
>>  * Add an optional API to loaders, module_repr() as defined above.
>
>I can accept that approach on one condition: the PEP 420
>implementation comes with the long-overdue migration of the definition
>of the import system semantics into the language reference.

I think you were listening in our sprint Nick! :)

One of the downsides of the PEP process is that sometimes the PEP will end up
being the definitive documentation for a new feature.  This sucks for many
reasons, including that PEPs don't live in the source tree and they end up
getting pretty out-of-date as time goes by.

PEP 302 suffers quite a bit from historical rot, but also from lots of
superfluous text that doesn't make it easy to understand exactly what is going
on.

At our sprint, we all agreed that it would be much better for there to be
documentation about the import system's semantics in the language reference
guide.  I think "Import System" is important enough to warrant a top-level
chapter, probably either before or after "Execution Model".  Section 6.11
describes the import statement, but I'd probably refactor large bits of that
into the "Import System" chapter, and leave $6.11 to describe the import
statement specifically.

I mentioned at the sprint that I'd be willing to work on such a document.
It's likely more than a one-person-operation, but I'd be happy to take a crack
at a first draft once PEP 420 gets accepted.

Cheers,
-Barry

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