Module file names

[MerlinSmiles]

Within Qcodes we have some files that may conflict with standard libs.
i.e. in the plots folder we have matplotlib and pyqtgraph, in the utils we have threading, in instruments we have visa, and there may be more.
The Issue I see with this is that if I want to add another file that uses the original libraries, I cant import them. I.e. If I make a new plotting thing, I cant import pyqtgraph as it tries to import from the file in the same directory.

ImportError: No module named 'pyqtgraph.multiprocess'; 'pyqtgraph' is not a package

Along with this, I see several base.py files, which can be slightly confusing, it would be nice if they had clear names too.

What do you guys think?
cc @alexcjohnson @giulioungaretti @AdriaanRol

[peendebak]

So far I have not found any issues with the naming, but I agree. We should change some of the names and the sooner we do this the better.

[alexcjohnson]

Agreed. some of these files (like utils.multiprocessing) are also rather overgrown at this point, so should be split up at the same time as we rename them.

[AdriaanRol]

Definately agree, this indeed causes some confusion so 👍

[giulioungaretti]

Can anybody (especially those who feel this is a problem) post a MWE that shows this issue ?

EDIT: MWE, minimal working example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_Working_Example

[MerlinSmiles]

put

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

into mwe.py inside the plots folder, and run it.
Yes it works if you are not inside that folder, and another qcodes module imports it. But (i think) everywhere where I have seen this it imports the actual named like that module and not something different.

[giulioungaretti]

closing this for now. It will eventually taken care of :D
As long as the class names are the same there won't be many problems.
Unless people decided on purpose to not use the qcodes namespace.
So if you did the right thing:

from qcodes import MatPlot

then your are safe. If you did this instead:

from qcodes.plots.qcmatplotlib import matplot

You'll have to refactor.