SF patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. - IMPORT_NAME takes an extra argument from the stack: the relativeness of the import. Only passed to __import__ when it's not -1. - __import__() takes an optional 5th argument for the same thing; it __defaults to -1 (old semantics: try relative, then absolute) - 'from . import name' imports name (be it module or regular attribute) from the current module's *package*. Likewise, 'from .module import name' will import name from a sibling to the current module. - Importing from outside a package is not allowed; 'from . import sys' in a toplevel module will not work, nor will 'from .. import sys' in a (single-level) package. - 'from __future__ import absolute_import' will turn on the new semantics for import and from-import: imports will be absolute, except for from-import with dots. Includes tests for regular imports and importhooks, parser changes and a NEWS item, but no compiler-package changes or documentation changes.

--- a/Python/codecs.c	Tue Feb 28 12:11:57 2006 +0000
+++ b/Python/codecs.c	Tue Feb 28 16:09:29 2006 +0000
@@ -831,7 +831,7 @@
 	interp->codec_error_registry == NULL)
 	Py_FatalError("can't initialize codec registry");
 
-    mod = PyImport_ImportModuleEx("encodings", NULL, NULL, NULL);
+    mod = PyImport_ImportModuleLevel("encodings", NULL, NULL, NULL, 0);
     if (mod == NULL) {
 	if (PyErr_ExceptionMatches(PyExc_ImportError)) {
 	    /* Ignore ImportErrors... this is done so that