Alternatives to imp.find_module?
importerror, namespaces, pylint, python
Solution
I've grown tired of this limitation in PyLint too.
I don't know a replacement for imp.find_modules(), but I think I found another way to deal with namespace packages in PyLint. See my comment on the bug report you linked to (http://www.logilab.org/ticket/8796).
The idea is to use pkg_resources to find namespace packages. Here's my addition to `logilab.common.modutils._module_file()`, just after `while modpath`:
while modpath:
if modpath[0] in pkg_resources._namespace_packages and len(modpath) > 1:
module = sys.modules[modpath.pop(0)]
path = module.__path__
This not very refined and only handles top-level namespace packages though.
Problem
Background I've grown tired of the issue with pylint not being able to import files when you use namespace packages and divide your code-base into separate folders. As such I started digging into the astNG source-code which has been identified as the source of the trouble (see bugreport 8796 on astng). At the heart of the issue seems to be the use of pythons own `imp.find_module` in the process of finding imports. What happens is that the import's first (sub)package - `a` in `import a.b.c` - is fed to `find_module` with a `None` path. Whatever path comes back is then fed into `find_module` the next pass in the look up loop where you try to find `b` in the previous example. Pseudo-code from logilab.common.modutils: ``` path = None while import_as_list: try: _, found_path, etc = find_module(import_as_list[0], path) #exception handling and checking for a better version in the .egg files path = [found_path] import_as_list.pop(0) ``` The Problem This is what's broken: you only get the first best hit from `find_module`, which may or may not have your subpackages in it. If you DON'T find the subpackages, you have no way to back out and try the next one. I tried explicitly using sys.path instead of None, so that the result could be removed from the path list and a second attempt be made, but python's module finder is clever enough that there doesn't have to be an exact match in the paths, making this approach unusable - to the best of my knowledge anyway. Teary-eyed Plea Is there an alternative to find_modules which will return ALL possible matches or take an exclude list? I'm also open to completely different solutions. Preferably not patching python by hand, but it wouldn't be impossible - at least for a local solution. (Caveat emptor: I'm running python 2.6 and for reasons of current company policy can't upgrade, suggestions for p3k etc won't get marked as accepted unless it's the only answer.)