The following code in py_compile.compile fails (tested on 3.6.6 and 3.7.3) with tracebacks that end like the one shown at the bottom. There's an AttributeError about importlib.utils.

"""
    if cfile is None:
        if optimize >= 0:
            optimization = optimize if optimize >= 1 else ''
            cfile = importlib.util.cache_from_source(file,
                                                     optimization=optimization)
        else:
            cfile = importlib.util.cache_from_source(file)
"""

Sample tail end of traceback:

"""
  File "/Users/jens/src/.eggs/Chameleon-3.6-py3.7.egg/chameleon/template.py", line 243, in _cook
    cooked = self.loader.build(source, filename)
  File "/Users/jens/src/.eggs/Chameleon-3.6-py3.7.egg/chameleon/loader.py", line 177, in build
    py_compile.compile(name)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/3.7.3/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/py_compile.py", line 130, in compile
    cfile = importlib.util.cache_from_source(file)
AttributeError: module 'importlib' has no attribute 'util'
"""

Can you please add a simplified script to reproduce this and possibly without any external dependencies? Looking at the traceback it seems to come from the project chameleon at https://github.com/malthe/chameleon/blob/983877e628a75f42c473cb2ea2350fb0727eb85b9/src/chameleon/loader.py#L177 . The file seems standalone without some helper functions from utils file.

Thank you for the prompt reply.

It turns out this is not a bug in py_compile. Other code we use imports importlib.util briefly for a quick check at module level and then deletes it, also at module scope. Removing the deletion fixes the issue.

Thanks again and apologies!

No problem, closing the issue.