This fixed the (motivating) syntax error from #3821, and has the benefit of working on py3 (when not built is show ImportError rather than syntax error). Merge?

will rebase and then i willl merge

@jreback good 2 merge?

what exactly is the reason the relative imports are bad?

i don't think they are bad necessarily, but they're certainly not needed here since they were used to refer to pandas. see here for short pro/con discussion. also the exception being caught here was too general...whenever i have an installation issue it's hidden by a cryptic error message... about not being able to import hashtable

Your error message is a big improvement, (and solves the even less descriptive "syntax error" in py2.5+3).

also importerrors should not be caught by except Exception clauses they should be caught by except ImportError: let's call a spade a spade...

sounds good then