recursive reload() "from some_module import *" in python

Question

I have module called KosmoSuite initialized by folowing __init__.py

...
from chemical_fuels import *
from orbital_mechanics import *
from termodynamics import *
from rail_guns import *
...

in files chemical_fuels.py, orbital_mechanics.py, termodynamics.py, rail_guns.py are some data tables, constants, and functions to conduct some physical computations (for example function orbital_mechanics.escape_velocity(M,R) to compute escape velocity from a planet of given mass and radius)

I would like to use python interpreter as interactive calculator of space-related problems.

However, The problem is interactive developlopment and debugging. When I do

>>> import KosmoSuite as ks
# ... modify something in orbital_mechanics.escape_velocity( ) ...
>>> reload(ks)
>>> ks.orbital_velocity( R, M)

However the ks.orbital_velocity( R, M) is not affected by my modifications to orbital_mechanics.escape_velocity(). Is there some alternative to reload(ks) which does the job ( i.e. reloading of all object, constants and functions imported by from some_module import * recursively )

Even better would be something like

>>> from KosmoSuite import *
# ... modify something in orbital_mechanics.escape_velocity( ) ...
>>> from KosmoSuite reimport *
>>> orbital_velocity( R, M)

footnote : I'm using Spyder ( Python(x,y) ) right now, but the same is true for default python interpreter. In this question is something about deep-reload ( dreload ) in IPython. I'm not sure if it does exactly this job, but I don't like IPython anyway.

Answer 1

A very heavy handed solution, so to speak, is to save the state of sys.modules before you import the module chain, then restore it to its original state before importing the modules again.

import sys
bak_modules = sys.modules.copy()
import KosmoSuite as ks
# do stuff with ks
# edit KosmoSuite
for k in sys.modules.keys():
    if not k in bak_modules:
        del sys.modules[k]
import KosmoSuite as ks

However, there are some caveats:

1. You may need to reimport even unrelated modules that you've imported in the meanwhile.
2. If you have created any objects using the old version of the module, they retain their old classes.

Still, I've used it when developing a module while testing it in an interactive session, and if you take the limitations into account, for the most part it works fine.