Logged In: YES 
user_id=1038590

If the semantics aren't clear, then isn't that a bug in
itself? If the behaviour of Jim's code is officially
undefined, then the docs need to say so.

A simple rule would seem to be "a package should not try to
import itself or any subpackages with an absolute import in
its __init__.py file".

Given the nature of __all__ and __path__ for packages, I
can't see a way to safely set eek's foo attribute before
foo's __init__.py has been processed.