[pypy-dev] __file__ attribute of mixed modules

[Antonio Cuni]

Hi all,
I'm having troubles running pypy-cli on windows.

One of the problem is due to the __file__ attribute of mixed modules; 
currently it's something like path/to/mixed/module/*.py.

When site.py runs, it tries to compute the abspath of every module 
loaded; after a bit of indirections, abspath call the posix__getfullpath 
helper written in C#.

The most obvious (and probably most correct) way to implement 
posix__getfullpath is to delegate to System.IO.Path.GetFullPath; here is 
where problems come, since the CLR implementation of GetFullPath 
complains if we pass it a name with an asterisk (Mono doesn't). This 
prevents pypy-cli to start.

One possible solution would be to place a check inside the C# helper and 
not call GetFullPath in case there is an asterisk in the name (or maybe 
remove the asterisk, call GetFullPath and re-insert the asterisk). I 
think this solution is ugly and hackish.

Another solution is to change the way we assign __file__ to mixed 
modules; e.g., we could use the name of the directory itself, or 
__init__.py instead of *.py. Or maybe some weird name like 
'i_dont_really_exist.py', etc.

What do you think?

ciao Anto