Backport importlib in the form of providing importlib.import_module(). This has

been done purely to help transitions from 2.7 to 3.1.

Lib/importlib.py

@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+"""Backport of importlib.import_module from 3.x."""
+import sys
+
+def _resolve_name(name, package, level):
+    """Return the absolute name of the module to be imported."""
+    level -= 1
+    try:
+        if package.count('.') < level:
+            raise ValueError("attempted relative import beyond top-level "
+                              "package")
+    except AttributeError:
+        raise ValueError("__package__ not set to a string")
+    base = package.rsplit('.', level)[0]
+    if name:
+        return "{0}.{1}".format(base, name)
+    else:
+        return base
+
+
+def import_module(name, package=None):
+    """Import a module.
+
+    The 'package' argument is required when performing a relative import. It
+    specifies the package to use as the anchor point from which to resolve the
+    relative import to an absolute import.
+
+    """
+    if name.startswith('.'):
+        if not package:
+            raise TypeError("relative imports require the 'package' argument")
+        level = 0
+        for character in name:
+            if character != '.':
+                break
+            level += 1
+        name = _resolve_name(name[level:], package, level)
+    __import__(name)
+    return sys.modules[name]