[mod_python] Subinterpreters and index.py

Nicolas Lehuen wrote:
>  
> Jorey Bump wrote:
> 
>>Automagic packaging could break a lot more than it fixes 
>>(you'd have to memorize every module or package in your path 
>>before creating directories).
> 
> 
> Yeah, Jorey, I do understand that, it's trivial stuff ; my problem is that
> mod_python.publisher seems to load all published modules in the top level
> namespace. Sorry, I don't want to be too critical since mod_python is really
> a nice achievement (very useful, especially when combined with the threaded
> Apache2 implementation so that you can share data between threads), but you
> don't have to lecture me on what is a namespace when the namespace issues
> reside in mod_python.publisher.

I'm sorry if I sounded pedantic. As your solution below indicates, this 
seems like more of an organizational problem than an indication of any 
deficiency in mod_python.publisher. I feel that mod_python behaves as 
expected when loading multiple applications into a single interpreter. 
The main reason I object to automagic packaging is that it would make it 
nearly impossible to develop large portions of the code outside of the 
Apache/mod_python environment, as I do now. Yes, there are some special 
precautions you have to take to ensure your applications will coexist, 
but your ordinary Python applications can benefit from this, as well.

> But like I've just wrote, we can also keep the best parts of mod_python, put
> away mod_python.publisher and use mod_python Servlets instead.

Absolutely! It's almost impossible to avoid developing your own 
framework when using mod_python. As some of these mature, their authors 
will generously share them. This will only help to serve different 
programming styles.

>>One solution is to create packages in your existing path. 
>>Anything you put in your installation's site-packages 
>>directory will be available to everyone on the system. In 
>>fact, that's why it was created.
> 
> That's what I do right now, but I want to host many different applications
> on my server (I have it configured in mass virtual hosting mode for that),
> and I don't think it's a good practice to have the code for all my
> applications available to every other application. That's why I wanted to do
> something like this :
> 
> $WWW/pythonlib/                  --> code explicitely shared by all
> applications
> $WWW/hosts/host1/                --> virtual host 1        
> $WWW/hosts/host1/pythonlib/      --> code shared by all apps and modules of
> host1
> $WWW/hosts/host1/index.py        --> redirects to the default application of
> host1
> $WWW/hosts/host1/app1/           --> first application on host1
> $WWW/hosts/host1/app1/pythonlib/ --> code shared by all modules of
> host1/app1
> $WWW/hosts/host1/app1/index.py   --> default module of host1/app1
> ...
> 
> In fact by reading this, I realise that by defining .htaccess files with
> specific PythonInterpreter and PythonPath directives, I can do precisely
> that plus get an healthy insulation of interpreters across applications (or
> at least across hosts). I'll try this.