To make sure there is no issue with code that is both Python 2 and 3
compatible, there are no plans to remove the module any sooner than
Python 4 (unless the community moves to Python 3 solidly before then).
ImportError.
The exception is raised by import when a module could not be found.
Technically this is defined as no viable loader could be found for the
specified module. This includes ``from ... import`` statements so that
the module usage is consistent for all situations where import
couldn't find what was requested.
This should allow for the common idiom of::
try:
import something
except ImportError:
pass
to be updated to using ModuleNotFoundError and not accidentally mask
ImportError messages that should propagate (e.g. issues with a
loader).
This work was driven by the fact that the ``from ... import``
statement needed to be able to tell the difference between an
ImportError that simply couldn't find a module (and thus silence the
exception so that ceval can raise it) and an ImportError that
represented an actual problem.
fromlist of __import__ propagate.
The problem previously was that if something listed in fromlist didn't
exist then that's okay. The fix for that was too broad in terms of
catching ImportError.
The trick with the solution to this issue is that the proper
refactoring of import thanks to importlib doesn't allow for a way to
distinguish (portably) between an ImportError because finders couldn't
find a loader, or a loader raised the exception. In Python 3.4 the
hope is to introduce a new exception (e.g. ModuleNotFound) to make it
clean to differentiate why ImportError was raised.
Brett Cannon
Barry Warsaw
Nadeem Vawda