It should reload dependants instead of dependencies.

Consider this example:

Module dependant depends on module dependency. (each module prints __name__)

If we reload dependant:

import dependency
reload(dependency)

the dependant module won’t be reloaded. It will print:

dependency
dependant
dependant

but it should print:

dependency
dependant
dependency
dependant

In your blog post http://www.indelible.org/ink/python-reloading/: dependency is A dependant is B

Quoting:

The solution to this problem is to also reload module B. [dependant]

But your code clearly doesn’t do that.

Is there something I misunderstood?

[Vanuan]

I think there’s just a mismatch between your expectation of what this library does and its intention.

According to you, README is lying:

this reloader will reload the requested module and all other modules that are dependent on that module.

There’s no mention of dependencies.

[micramm]

I think there’s just a mismatch between your expectation of what this library does and its intention. The scenario that the library addresses is that your code imports some module which, in turn, imports a submodule. If you then do some work on the submodule, your code is able to get those changes by running reload(module).

If you could only reload dependents and not dependencies, then you would have to call reload(module.submodule) from your code. But then you have to know exactly what’s been changed. Reloading all the dependencies accounts for arbitrary changes in the submodules.

Being able to reload all the dependants makes sense, but I would call this an extension rather than a bug.

For your os example. there’s a blacklist command that prevents reloader from reloading it.