FYI, here is code that can handle arbitrary dotted names: <http://svn.eby-sarna.com/Importing/peak/util/imports.py?view=markup>.  I haven’t checked if its error reporting has the problem we’re discussing in this report.

An alternative would be to use colon notation, e.g. package.submodule:Thing.Nested.attribute.

My preference is still for find_object, using dots and with the nesting prohibition.