Netbox conflicting with Python standard library Lib/secrets.py

[diddi-]

Netbox does not have a single root netbox package so anything inside netbox/ will be considered a separate package in Python. For example the secets package in Netbox conflicts with Python standard library secrets.

Environment

• Python version: 3.7.7
• NetBox version: 2.8.1

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a new custom script 1-test.py

import secrets
class SecretScript(Script):
    def run(self, data):
        self.log_success(secrets.token_hex())

2. Browse to the script from web ui http://localhost/extras/scripts/1-test/SecretScript/
3. Hit Run Script button

Expected Behavior

A success log with the message containing a random hex string, similar to

>>> import secrets
>>> secrets.token_hex()
'95d6e2a2460ffd2fed63d6a78a69ae5a5dd7bf2676e7cd393bc9e80bc261cbe9'

Observed Behavior

Exception:
An exception occurred: AttributeError: module 'secrets' has no attribute 'token_hex'

[diddi-]

I discovered this while trying to build a Python package that our custom scripts will use. Having all directories under netbox/ be their own top level packages make imports a bit awkward as Netbox rely on its own secrets package for example.

Would it be possible to have a structure like netbox.secrets instead?

[jeremystretch]

Fun fact: NetBox predates the standard secrets library, which was introduced in Python 3.6. We recently had to work around this conflict to accommodate a recent Django release, which you can see here.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a palatable solution to this problem. We would need to rename the secrets app, which obviously would be quite disruptive and probably not worth the negligible gain.

[jeremystretch]

I'm going to close this issue as I don't think there's anything actionable in the immediate future. Might be worth revisiting down the road but unless the conflict escalates to a serious problem, renaming the app is unlikely to be worth the disruption to users.