The documentation for ast says that arguments that are marked with a '?' in the abstract grammar are optional and can therefore be None.
When I try to compile a Module node which contains an ImportFrom node with attribute level=None compile() throws an exception:

Module(body=[ImportFrom(module='time', names=[alias(name='sleep', asname=None), alias(name='time', asname=None)], level=None, lineno=0, col_offset=0)])

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "g0.py", line 423, in <module>
    p.main()
  File "g0.py", line 65, in main
    self.reproduce("g1.pyc")
  File "g0.py", line 85, in reproduce
    co = self.generate_bytecode(st, genome)
  File "g0.py", line 243, in generate_bytecode
    co = compile(st, id, "exec")
ValueError: invalid integer value: ��������

So, I tried to set level=0:
Module(body=[ImportFrom(module='time', names=[alias(name='sleep', asname=None), alias(name='time', asname=None)], level=0, lineno=0, col_offset=0)])

and everything worked fine.

BTW: The unprintable bytes in the error message are:
ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd

Here is a patch for the bad error message (PyBytes_AS_BYTES after PyObject_Repr, bah)

LGTM.

New changeset ffcdfc534942 by Amaury Forgeot d'Arc in branch '3.2':
Issue #13436: Fix a bogus error message when an AST object was passed
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/ffcdfc534942

New changeset 470f7d7c57ce by Amaury Forgeot d'Arc in branch '3.2':
Issue #13436: commit regenerated Python-ast.c
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/470f7d7c57ce

I fixed the bogus error message, but "level=None" is still not allowed, whereas the docs promise that optional values can be None.

Does this apply to 2.7 as well?

I believe msg148146 is due to a commit message typo.

level=None is now allowed: https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/default/Python/Python-ast.c#l5224 (see line 5224 to 5232) I converted the example in msg147972 to a Python script. test_bad_integer is still useful as it uses the required 'lineno' field. I will also commit issue13436.py as a test case.

New changeset 59638baee25e by Berker Peksag in branch 'default':
Issue #13436: Add a test to make sure that ast.ImportFrom(level=None) works
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/59638baee25e