Hello everyone,

First of all, this is my occasion to say thanks for the rasterio project. It has been very helpful simplifying my life last year. I write a sofware that depends on rasterio, should ensure compatibility with Python 2 and Python 3, and should be deployed behind a web server (Apache with mod_wsgi). This last requirement triggers a problem caused by the way rasterio ensures Python 2/3 compatibility as I understand it after reading the "compat" module and the "setup.py".

Below is the stacktrace I have from Apache when trying to load my app:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/eodag/rest/server.wsgi", line 3, in <module>
  from eodag.rest.server import app as application
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/eodag/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
  from .api.core import EODataAccessGateway      # noqa
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/eodag/api/core.py", line 27, in <module>
  from eodag.api.search_result import SearchResult
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/eodag/api/search_result.py", line 26, in <module>
  from eodag.api.product import EOProduct
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/eodag/api/product/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
  from ._product import EOProduct  # noqa
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/eodag/api/product/_product.py", line 25, in <module>
  import rasterio
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/rasterio/__init__.py", line 22, in <module>
  from rasterio._base import gdal_version
File "rasterio/_base.pyx", line 20, in init rasterio._base
File "/opt/eodag/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/rasterio/compat.py", line 26, in <module>
  import mock
ImportError: No module named mock

I guess "mock" is used in rasterio for testing purpose, I do use it for that myself. If that's the case, it is weird to have rasterio brake if we are in Python 2 without the "mock" module being installed, which is clearly the case here. To have mock installed at the same time as rasterio, one must do: "pip install rasterio[dev]". However, we always just do "pip install rasterio" (which fails to install "mock").

I think compatibility for testing purposes should be decoupled from compatibility for the core functionality. Is it possible to have it done in rasterio ? That would help avoid this kind of problem.

Thank you in advance for your time on this issue.