Name Inclusion

This project lists top-level names that are likely to work as imports in an out-of-the-box Python interpreter. It is a superset of what you find in sys.stdlib_module_names on a modern version, but we give consistent answers regardless of the version of python you’re running, the platform, availability of native libs, or compile args.

We haven’t seen a compelling reason to add code to:

• special-case test names other than the top-level “test”

• handle sub-modules

• include names that only existed for prerelease, after a final is out

• use any finer granularity than major.minor [and in fact, the simplest use is just major]

The intended audience is people writing tools that need to understand imports, such as import sorters or dependency checkers, to be able to know which names are plausibly stdlib.

We intentionally take the union of names available across versions and platforms, and don’t sweat the exact import name – being more precise in those directions leads to complex code. If you find you have different needs, see the source for generate_stdlib_module_names.py or the discussion on issue 127484.