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Is there a guide/overview/doc/tutorial/whatever of how Hy is implemented?

I'm curious how hy modules can be imported in python directly.

Python has API that allows you to replace parts of import system with arbitrary Python code.

If you are talking about the import hooks, I think those require the imported file to have valid python syntax. The import hooks work on the python AST (I think)

I think you are correct, they monkey-patched importlib

https://github.com/hylang/hy/blob/master/hy/importer.py#L132

As I recall, patching was simply the most expedient approach. Otherwise, for the changes we needed to make, we would've had to copy a lot of source from the standard loader implementation in CPython for only a few simple changes.

https://github.com/hylang/hy/pull/1672

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