demandimport

Delays loading of modules until they are actually used. Perfect for Python apps that need to be snappy like command-line utils. Source-code derived from mercurial.

To enable, write

import demandimport; demandimport.enable()

Imports of the following form will be delayed

import a, b.c
import a.b as c
from a import b, c # a will be loaded immediately, though

These imports with not be delayed

from a import *
b = __import__(a)

Delayed loading will confuse some third-party modules. In that case you can disable the delay for just that module. For example

demandimport.ignore('Crypto.PublicKey._fastmath')

There are also versions that can be used with with

with demandimport.enabled():
   # do something
   with demandimport.disabled():
      import troublesome.module
   with demandimport.ignored('test'):
      import other.troublemaker

Installation

To install demandimport, simply run:

pip install demandimport

Attribution

Olivia Mackall <olivia@selenic.com> is the original author of the module in Mercurial on which this module is based. Bas Westerbaan <bas@westerbaan.name> maintains it now.