Python has become one of the most popular programming languages for software development due to its simplicity, readability, and versatility. As the Python ecosystem grows, developers face increasing challenges in avoiding module conflicts, which occur when different packages have the same namespace modules. Unfortunately, existing work has neither investigated the module conflict comprehensively nor provided tools to detect the conflict. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the module conflict problem and its impact on the Python ecosystem. We propose a novel technique called InstSimulator, which leverages semantics and installation simulation to achieve accurate and efficient module extraction. Based on this, we implement a tool called ModuleGuard to detect module conflicts for the Python ecosystem. For the study, we first collect 97 MC issues, classify the characteristics and causes of these MC issues, summarize three different conflict patterns, and analyze their potential threats. Then, we conducted a large-scale analysis of the whole PyPI ecosystem (4.2 million packages) and GitHub popular projects (3,711 projects) to detect each MC pattern and analyze their potential impact. We discovered that module conflicts still impact numerous TPLs and GitHub projects. This is primarily due to developers' lack of understanding of the modules within their direct dependencies, not to mention the modules of the transitive dependencies. Our work reveals Python's shortcomings in handling naming conflicts and provides a tool and guidelines for developers to detect conflicts.

翻译：Python因其简洁性、可读性和通用性，已成为软件开发中最流行的编程语言之一。随着Python生态系统的扩展，开发者在避免模块冲突方面面临日益严峻的挑战——当不同软件包拥有相同命名空间的模块时便会发生此类冲突。遗憾的是，现有研究既未全面探究模块冲突问题，也未提供检测工具。为此，本文系统研究了模块冲突问题及其对Python生态系统的影响。我们提出了一种名为InstSimulator的新技术，通过语义分析与安装模拟实现精准高效的模块提取。基于此技术，我们实现了名为ModuleGuard的工具，用于检测Python生态系统中的模块冲突。在研究过程中，我们首先收集了97个模块冲突问题，分类梳理了这些问题的特征与成因，归纳出三种不同的冲突模式，并分析了其潜在威胁。随后，我们对整个PyPI生态系统（420万软件包）和GitHub热门项目（3711个项目）开展了大规模分析，逐类检测各冲突模式并评估其潜在影响。研究发现，模块冲突仍影响着大量第三方库和GitHub项目，这主要源于开发者对其直接依赖模块缺乏了解，更遑论传递依赖中的模块。本工作揭示了Python在命名冲突处理方面的不足，并为开发者提供了检测冲突的工具及实践指南。