Can't import package that I published to PyPI

July 16, 2024

I was able to successfully publish a package to PyPi and I am able to install it using pip without errors, but I cannot import it in another file – it just throws a ModuleNotFoundError every time.

My pip installation is fine as I don’t have this problem with any other package, and my package shows up in pip list, but I cannot import it. I have also tried this on 2 computers, and I have this same issue with both, so I know it is something wrong in the setup of my package.

The project file structure is this:

tud-sumo/
    __init__.py
    simulation.py
    controllers.py
    events.py
    plot.py
    scenarios.py
    utils.py
LICENSE
README.md
pyproject.toml
setup.py

My setup file is this:

from setuptools import setup
setup()

Here is my pyproject.toml:

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

[project]
name = "tud-sumo"
version = "3.0.3"
description = "TU Delft SUMO wrapper"
readme = "README.md"
authors = [{ name = "Callum Evans", email = "c.evans@tudelft.nl" }]
license = { file = "LICENSE" }
dependencies = [
    "traci",
    "numpy",
    "matplotlib",
    "mpl-tools",
    "tqdm",
    "shapely",
]
keywords = ["traffic simulator", "microscopic", "SUMO"]
classifiers=[
    "Development Status :: 4 - Beta",
    "Intended Audience :: Science/Research",
    "Topic :: Scientific/Engineering",
    "License :: OSI Approved :: Apache Software License",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14"
]

[project.urls]
Documentation = "https://tud-sumo.github.io/docs/"
Repository = "https://github.com/tud-sumo/tud-sumo"

I have been publishing it with python3 setup.py sdist and twine upload dist/*.

I have tried uninstalling & reinstalling with pip, making sure it is not using a cached version, but I really don’t understand why it is not working, so any help is appreciated.

>Solution :

To make my comments (and the PR) an answer:

tud-sumo is not a valid package name. There has been absolutely no way it could have ever been importable with import tud-sumo. __import__("tud-sumo") maybe, but no one does that.
Using setup.py is outmoded. I prefer Hatch as my PEP 517 build backend, but setuptools.build_meta is OK too. Hatch just makes certain things easier, and it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot.