Suggestion: non-fatal failed imports

[Gregor Richards]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> I was thinking, in my Luigi lib, I was just thinking about adding 
> support for Schooner's fonts.  But I don't want to require that in order 
> to compile. Ok so I could add yet another version flag, but I was 
> thinking that it would be nice if support for fonts could just be 
> compiled in if found and not otherwise.
> 
> So what if there were something like try/catch for imports?
> 
> This works in Python, of course it's no problem there because imports 
> are done at run time.  But it is a fairly commonly used idiom there, 
> which says to me that if it exists it will get used.
> 
> Anyway, I seek some better way to control various optional dependencies 
> than lots of --version flags.
> 
> --bb

I actually considered adding something like this as a DSSS feature, but 
decided it would be too much of a hack. It would be nifty if this was a 
language feature.

  - Gregor Richards