Clarification on "private" modules in a package

[Sangeppato]

In Typing Guidance for Python Libraries it is stated that "a type checker will treat all modules within that package as importable unless the module is marked private" and: "If a file __init__.py uses the form from .A import X, symbol “A” is not private unless the name begins with an underscore".

I have the following package structure:

pkg
├─ subpkg
│  ├─ __init__.py
│  └─ _a.py
├─ __init__.py
└─ b.py

pkg/__init__.py:

from . import b, subpkg

pkg/subpkg/__init__.py:

from ._a import *

When using autocompletion with Pylance in VSCode, I can see that imported symbols in b.py (such as numpy and math) are correctly considered "private" and thus not visible in the completion pop-up. On the other hand, when completing pkg.subpkg. I can see the submodule _a as importable. Maybe I didn't understand it properly, but considering the aforementioned statement I would expect _a to be considered private and omitted from the autocompletion suggestions. Is there anything I'm missing? Is there a way to prevent implementation modules such as _a from appearing in the completion pop-up? Thank you in advance.

[erictraut]

Your understanding is correct. I would expect that _a should not be presented as a completion suggestion when completing from pkg.subpkg import X (where X is the current location of your cursor). I recommend filling a bug in the pylance-release project. Since this is a language server issue, it's under the purview of the pylance team.