Let's talk about the problem I really want help with. I brought up a proposal earlier, but it was only half serious. I realize Python is too sacred to accept such a heretical change. ;-)
Here's the real problem: maintaining import statements when moving sizable blocks of code between modules is hairy and error prone. I move major code sections almost every day. I'm constantly restructuring the code to make it clearer and simpler, to minimize duplication, and to meet new requirements. To give you an idea of the size I'm talking about, just today I moved around 600 lines between about 8 modules, resulting in a 1400 line diff. It wasn't just cut-n-paste, either: nearly every line I moved needed adjustment to work in its new context. While moving and adjusting the code, I also adjusted the import statements. When I finished, I ran the test suite, and sure enough, I had missed some imports. While the test suite helps a lot, it's prohibitively difficult to cover all code in the test suite, and I had lingering doubts about the correctness of all those import statements. So I examined them some more and found a couple more mistakes. Altogether I estimate I spent 20% of my time just examining and fixing import statements, and who knows what other imports I missed. I'm surprised this problem isn't more familiar to the group. Perhaps some thought I was asking a newbie question. I'm definitely a newbie in the sum of human knowledge, but at least I've learned some tiny fraction of it that includes Python, DRY, test-first methodology, OOP, design patterns, XP, and other things that are commonly understood by this group. Let's move beyond that. I'm looking for ways to gain just a little more productivity, and improving the process of managing imports could be low-hanging fruit. So, how about PyDev? Does it generate import statements for you? I've never succeeded in configuring PyDev to perform autocompletion, but if someone can say it's worth the effort, I'd be willing to spend time debugging my PyDev configuration. How about PyLint / PyChecker? Can I configure one of them to tell me only about missing / extra imports? Last time I used one of those tools, it spewed excessively pedantic warnings. Should I reconsider? Is there a tool that simply scans each module and updates the import statements, subject to my approval? Maybe someone has worked on this, but I haven't found the right Google incantation to discover it. Shane -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
