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I believe your analysis is on target, Armin.  I'll fix it.  It hangs 
under Windows too, BTW.  The problem appears unique to 
2.3, and was introduced when a rewrite of tempfile.py started 
to import random.

I agree that the import lock can be confusing, but also unsure 
what can be done about it.  Running gobs of code as a side 
effect of merely importing is dubious practice, so I'm not sure 
I want to make that easier <wink>.  In any case, a thread 
waiting for the import lock simply can't know whether the 
thread holding it will ever let go of it; a lock here seems the 
right solution to a different problem.