add public modules to use direct import first stage like 'import astr… - #17587

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Hi ! Could you explain your motivation for this change ? Unfortunately, exposing more public API paths comes with a very high maintenance cost so I must say it's unlikely we'd accept it. Maybe we could offer a better solution if you told us what the problem was ?

Thanks for explanation,
for new users for this lib like me try to use sample stats lib via 'import astropy.stats as st'.
documentation also define use 'from astropy import stats' but ı think this import style just suggest.

Yes, it works without this patch; I checked it.

In my specific scenario, where the internet is not available for some time,
I need the stats library for searching. I have an older version 6.1.6 installed, so I tried:

import astropy
dir(astropy)

The stats module is not present, so I assume it was added in a later version.
Currently, I haven’t checked other versions or the online documentation.

I want to emphasize that when working offline, having the available submodules listed in the result of the dir function or including them in the docstring would be much more useful.

I see. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, I agree that the top level namespace could be cleaned up. I have opened #17589 as a follow-up issue for discussion and we can always revisit this PR in the future once consensus is reached. Thanks again!