[PEAK] Packaging peak apps

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:24 AM 9/7/04 -0500, Stephen Haberman wrote:

> > Have you tried the latest py2exe?  Apparently version 0.5 uses Python
>2.3's
> > "import from zipfile" facility, so it seems like it should be compatible
> > with PEAK's import facility (although I haven't tried it myself).
>
>Nifty.
>
>If that doesn't work, I had some free time when I ran into the problem so I
>fixed the zip import bug in Python.
>
>The bug is:
>
>http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=856103&group_id=547
>0&atid=105470

Ouch; I didn't realize that 'reload()' didn't work with import-from-zip.

However, that bug has a simple patch (dated April 1) that seems to me it 
would fix the issue for PEAK.  Specifically, the fact that reload() is 
broken for PEP 302 imports.



>The original patch was really small, just a 2-line change to import.c to
>pass a loader reference to find_module, but then it turns out the
>zipimport.c was keeping around buffers or some such thing, so the patch got
>larger and more complex and hence less likely to be quickly committed to
>CVS.

Yep; that "two line" patch *should* fix the problem for PEAK+py2exe, 
however.  Unfortunately, there's no easy pure-Python workaround that I see, 
because PEP 302's proposed 'imp.get_loader()' was never implemented.


>If someone in good standing (~cough~ Phillip ~cough~) were to review, okay,
>and put some weight behind the patch, it might make it in to CVS someday. I
>don't know anything about the currently 2.4 release cycle, maybe it is
>already too late for 2.4.

I can't vouch for the other zipimport fixes, I'm afraid, it's outside my 
expertise.  But the failure to use loaders in the PEP 302 support is a 
separate issue, and that fix alone should suffice for PEAK's use of reload, 
because PEAK isn't *really* reloading anything; it's using reload to force 
the built-in import mechanisms to come into play.  Thus, fixing the PEP 302 
issue alone should fix PEAK, even though it won't fix zip-import reloading 
in the general case.

Here's what I recommend:

* File a bug report for the PEP 302 issue (loader not carried through by 
reload function), and assign it to me

* Attach the patches for import.c and test_importhooks.py; leave off 
everything about zip importing.

* Verify that this reduced patch set is correct; i.e. its test case should 
fail under unpatched 2.3 and 2.4, and succeed under patched 2.3 or 2.4.

* I will apply the patch for 2.4 and backport to the 2.3 maintenance 
branch, so that this can go in 2.3.5 as well as 2.4

* File a new bug report that is specific to the zipimport cache issue, 
along with the remaining (and now much smaller) patch set.  Getting 
somebody to look at that should now be a little easier, since it will only 
deal with zipimport and not PEP 302 generally.

That last step isn't necessary for PEAK to support py2exe, though.