Question

i’m writing a small python utility which will be consumed by moderately non-technical users and which needs to interface w/ some protobufs.

ideally, i would like the only prerequisites to using this on a local machine to be:

have python installed

* have an SVN checkout of the repository
* run a simple bash script to build the local proto .py definitions
* run "python myutility"

i’m running into trouble around importing descriptor_pb2.py, tho.
i’ve seen Why do I see "cannot import name descriptor_pb2" error when using Google Protocol Buffers? ,
but would like to avoid adding the additional prerequisite of having run the proto SDK installer.
i’ve modified the bash script to also generate descriptor_pb2.py in the local heirarchy,
which works for the first level of imports from my other _pb2.py files, but it looks like descriptor_pb2.py itself tries to import descriptor_pb2 can’t find it:

    $ python myutility.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "myutility.py", line 4, in <module>
    import protos.myProto_pb2
  File "/myPath/protos/myProto_pb2.py", line 8, in <module>
    from google.protobuf import descriptor_pb2
  File "/myPath/google/protobuf/descriptor_pb2.py", line 8, in <module>
    from google.protobuf import descriptor_pb2
ImportError: cannot import name descriptor_pb2

my local folder looks like:

* myutility.py
* google/
  * protobuf/
    * descriptor.py
    * descriptor_pb2.py
* protos
  * myProto_ob2.py

also, i’m a python n00b, so it’s possible i’m overlooking something obvious.

tia,
orion

Answer 1

commenting out the import of descriptor_pb2.py in descriptor_pb2.py itself fixed my issue. thanks to tim mcclarren for suggesting that !