Developing new indices

[Balinus]

• xclim version: master
• Python version: 3.6
• Operating System: Ubuntu 18.04

Description

Adding a new index in _simple.py is not propagated to the actual indices module. Reproducible steps:

1. Add function def foo(): in _simple.py

   def foo():
   return 0

2. Start python
3. ìmport xclim.indices as xci
4. Trying to access foo with xci.foo returns

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: module 'xclim.indices' has no attribute 'foo'

note that the indices is accessible bi a direct call. e.g.

xci._simple.foo()
0

[huard]

You have to add the function name to __name__.

[tlvu]

It's actually to __all__ list in _simple.py. But not sure we need __all__ in the first place.

[huard]

Right ! I think we need it to play nicely with the from _indices import * and avoid importing non-indices objects.

[tlvu]

Right, but it seems that __all__ is containing everything in _simple.py now so we are not yet leveraging it to hide any non-indices yet. By the time we have non-indices, we can simply put those non-indices in another file and not do import * of that new file so those non-indices won't be exposed.

Brief, if we get more simple support calls like this, maybe remove the usage of __all__ to not confuse future contributors.

[huard]

What I meant is that without all, we'd also import logging, xr, etc.

[tlvu]

Oh true ! I didn't realize import * will import other modules as well. We're stuck with __all__ then.

[Balinus]

Perfect, will try with the proposed solution. Closing this until I can work on this in my local copy. Thanks!