One specific change we should make is that the "see also" at the start of the 3.3 importlib docs should link to the new section of the language reference, rather than Guido's packaging essay. We can probably also cull that long list of PEPs, moving it to the end of the language reference section.

Other than that, yeah, we've been working away at this for years, trying to bring it down to a more manageable level of complexity. Brett's efforts in finally purging the last remnants of the old pre-PEP 302 import systems are what made it possible for Barry to finally create a coherent spec for the import system (previously, none of us really wanted to write such a thing, as there would have been *way* too many caveats needed in attempting to grandfather in the legacy import mechanics).

Now that that is done, 3.4 will likely include a number of improvements to importlib to make it easier to use as a basis for custom import hooks (as Brett and Eric noted, better support for customisation of the source -> bytecode compilation step will definitely be one of them.

As far as books go, I think the evolution of Python's import system might make an interesting entry if they do a third edition of The Architecture of Open Source Applications [1] :)

[1] http://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html