id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
21674	django.utils.module_loading.import_by_path considered harmful	Aymeric Augustin	Berker Peksag	"The purpose of this function is to import whatever its argument points to.

If it fails, it should raise ImportError, signalling that an import failed.

Unfortunately, it catches exceptions, including ImportErrors, and re-raises ImproperlyConfigured. Such exception masking makes it needlessly hard to diagnose circular import problems, because it makes it look like the problem comes from inside Django. It becomes supremely perverse when some code in Django catches ImproperlyConfigured and things go wrong further down the line.

I understand that the original intent was to provide more frienly error messages, but I believe that ImportError is a perfectly fine and suitable exception and that replacing it with a more generic one is a net loss.

(I know I'm attacking an old dogma, but this is an easy step in the long standing ""improved error reporting"" project.)"	Bug	closed	Utilities	dev	Normal	fixed		berker.peksag@…	Ready for checkin	1	0	0	0	0	0