Faker adds path objects to sys.path_importer_cache, breaking other packages

• Faker version: 6.6.3
• OS: Gentoo Linux

After importing faker, entries with PosixPath objects are added as keys to sys.path_importer_cache. However, the keys are supposed to be regular strs there, and the wrong type breaks software relying on str methods being available, e.g. astroid:

___________________________________________ ClassNodeTest.test_slots_added_dynamically_still_inferred ____________________________________________

self = <tests.unittest_scoped_nodes.ClassNodeTest testMethod=test_slots_added_dynamically_still_inferred>

    def tearDown(self):
        del sys.path[0]
        datadir = find("")
        for key in list(sys.path_importer_cache):
>           if key.startswith(datadir):
E           AttributeError: 'PosixPath' object has no attribute 'startswith'

tests/resources.py:41: AttributeError

Note that since Faker installs a pytest plugin, it is autoloaded by default in all programs’ test suites.

Steps to reproduce

import sys
import faker
print(sys.path_importer_cache)

Expected behavior

The printed dict should only contain str keys.

Actual behavior

[...] PosixPath('/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/faker/providers/address'): FileFinder(PosixPath('/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/faker/providers/address')), PosixPath('/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/faker/providers/automotive'): FileFinder(PosixPath('/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/faker/providers/automotive')), [...]

[levrik]

@fcurella We’ve started seeing this issue today the first time without any code changes or upgrades on Faker. The only change was the upgrade from Python 3.8.9 to 3.8.10 after which this issue started to happen.

[mike-oakley]

After looking into it, we were running Faker 6.6.3 which didn’t include the patch referenced by this issue. Pinning Faker to 8.1.2 fixed this for us on Python 3.8.10 (previously we didn’t have Faker pinned as we’re using it as a peer dependency of Factory Boy)