Simple Design Decisions on Batch Mode Compilation

So. Always when I am mucking around I find I didn't think something through; i.e., bothered by underspecification. The problem with the module system is that I haven't decided on how the top-level program should work. I want to support some scheme where I can use the program as both an interpreter as well as a compiler, and that affects the internal organization.

First, the bootstrap compiler: This program behaves akin to a batch compiler as gcc. Each module is compiled individually to "object code" and all modules are "linked" together and output as a C program. (Where in my simple compiler, the object code is the serialized type-checked AST, and the linking phase is simply whole program compilation. But yeah, works.) That's a pretty straightforward manner of compilation, moreover, keeps a number of invariants trivially.

But I want an interpreter first, and a compiler second, which means I want to support invoking the program on one input file, where it includes all other files, and all files are semantically checked and translated in one run. Now you would think you could run the interpreter internally in batch mode on all imported files but, no, it turns out you can easily pollute the declaration space of the import chain of individual files since other modules will have been loaded; it probably is also too expensive to run the interpreter as a compiler in batch mode first.

The easy way out is to live a little and don't give a fuck, of course.

How does Python handle this? I need some solution. Asking the question is answering it, of course.