Clarify the pkgutil.walk_packages() note

[cjerdonek]

BPO	15288
Nosy	@brettcannon, @cjerdonek, @rlamy

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2012-07-09.18:11:20.495>
created_at = <Date 2012-07-07.18:15:57.291>
labels = ['easy', 'docs']
title = 'Clarify the pkgutil.walk_packages() note'
updated_at = <Date 2012-07-09.18:48:42.156>
user = 'https://github.com/cjerdonek'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2012-07-09.18:48:42.156>
actor = 'brett.cannon'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-07-09.18:11:20.495>
closer = 'brett.cannon'
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2012-07-07.18:15:57.291>
creator = 'chris.jerdonek'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 15288
keywords = ['easy']
message_count = 6.0
messages = ['164916', '164959', '165096', '165102', '165103', '165106']
nosy_count = 5.0
nosy_names = ['brett.cannon', 'chris.jerdonek', 'docs@python', 'python-dev', 'Ronan.Lamy']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue15288'
versions = ['Python 3.3']

[cjerdonek]

The note at the end of the pkgutil.walk_packages() (and iter_modules()) documentation can be improved somewhat:

http://docs.python.org/dev/library/pkgutil.html#pkgutil.walk_packages

For example, "importers" aren't referenced earlier in the documentation of the function, so it's not immediately clear what they are referring to. I also think that enough information should be given so that one can run the examples given and have them work. They currently don't.

I can put together proposed wording. See the bpo-14982 discussion for background.

[brettcannon]

Probably linking the term "importers" into the glossary should be enough.

[rlamy]

It seems that most, if not all, uses of "importer" in pkgutil refer to finders, e.g. ImpImporter is a actually only a finder, not an importer. So s/importer/finder/ is needed, and perhaps also a note explaining that ImpImporter isn't in fact an importer, in addition to glossary links.

[python-dev]

New changeset 96f7926ea444 by Brett Cannon in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-15288: Clarify that pkgutil.walk_packages() and friends will no
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/96f7926ea444

[brettcannon]

I changed to term to "loader" and linked to the glossary. I also added a versionchanged note for Python 3.3 so people are not too surprised that pkgutil no longer does what it did in Python 3.2.

[brettcannon]

Ronan is right that it is all about finders, not importers per-se. I fixed the docs to not say "loader".