On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Aaron Bentley <[email protected]> wrote: > On 11/10/2010 08:53 AM, Jonathan Lange wrote: >> It is in your interest as a Launchpad hacker to never write an >> __init__.py that just imports a bunch of stuff using globs. > > You make it sound like globs are a key component of the problem. Would > writing an __ini__.py that just imports a bunch of stuff without using > globs avoid the technical issues? >
Well, that's partly because I've made a couple of packages that do non-glob __init__.py re-exports that seem to work OK (lp.codehosting.vfs, testtools). I'm still not convinced it's a good idea, but I can't condemn the practice as roundly as glob re-exports. I think there's a place for using re-exports to carefully control the namespace of a public module. Globs do make it much worse though, since they make static analysis harder, which in turn makes figuring out dependencies harder, and since they can easily lead to implicit registration of things (like they were in Launchpad for webservice APIs). Certainly, using __init__.py glob-or-no is a large part of the problem, because you can't get at any of the modules within a package without first evaluating that package's __init__.py. Twisted has long had a ban on anything other than docstrings in __init__.py for this very reason. jml _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
