In recent PEP 451-related discussions, the subject of reloading has come up multiple times.  Most recently, PJE suggested that reload semantics are under-specified (and under-tested). [1][2]

It may be worth adding a dedicated section on reloading to the reference doc.  As evidenced by that email thread (and issue #19413), there are some reload semantics that should be specified (and tested) but aren't.

While reload has a less prominent place in Python 3 (no longer a builtin), it is still a long-standing feature of the import system which gets used at more than just the interactive prompt.  I'd hate to see more issues like 19413 pop up later because of under-specification.  Furthermore, it would likely help other implementations pre-3.3 (a.k.a. pre-importlib) cover reload corner cases.

[1] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2013-October/129868.html
[2] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2013-October/129971.html

Just a gentle prod in the ribs guys.

Hi Eric, 

Is this still a concern since PEP 451 has been implemented for over 5 years now?

Thanks!

Thanks for checking in, Cheryl!

Clearly no one picked up this banner. :)  Furthermore, I'm not aware of any reload-related complaints coming from the community.  I know of only a couple major use cases for reload():  refresh parts of a running app during development and reload a config (e.g. SIGHUP).  Those use cases seem to be mostly stable.  Given ~4.5 years of zero activity here, I think it's safe to say nothing further is going to happen. :)

So I'm closing this issue.  At this point I don't see much value in keeping it open.  If someone later finds a concrete motivator for more detail about module-reloading in the language reference (or decide they want to drive this effort) then they can re-open this issue (or create a new one) at that point.