On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 02:21:39 -0700, Shane Hathaway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >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
I don't know about this :) >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? I use pyflakes for this: <http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodPyflakes>. The *only* things it tells me about are modules that are imported but never used and names that are used but not defined. It's false positive rate is something like 1 in 10,000. > >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. This is something I've long wanted to add to pyflakes (or as another feature of pyflakes/emacs integration). Jean-Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
