Question

Here is my current directory structure:

proj/
proj/__init__.py
proj/submodFolder/
proj/submodFolder/submod/
proj/submodFolder/submod/__init__.py

I’m writing a project and I would like to have import submod or even import submodFolder.submod in proj/__init__.py. However without __init__.py in submodFolder this won’t work.

Assume submodFolder is a git repository that i have sub-repoed (a third party library if you will); adding the requisite __init__.py will break the git subrepo and complicate updating libraries from their master repos.

Assuming submodFolder is an immutable git sub-repo what is the best way to push python down the dirtree to the module? Modifying the python path seemed the nearest solution to me – but none of the questions already asked assumed an immutable submodFolder.

Examples welcome, note relative paths.

Answer 1

If you prefer not to modify the PYTHONPATH environment variable, you can modify sys.path inside of proj/__init__.py, the following should work:

import sys
import os
sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)), 'submodFolder'))

import submod

Step-by-step code with comments, so it makes a little more sense:

# get absolute path to proj/__init__.py
script_path = os.path.realpath(__file__)

# strip off the file name to get the absolute path to proj
proj_path = os.path.dirname(script_path)

# join on os.sep to get absolute path to proj/submodFolder
submod_path = os.path.join(proj_path, 'submodFolder')

# add the complete path to proj/submodFolder to sys.path
sys.path.append(submod_path)