How to import locally installed library?

January 10, 2024

I’ve installed my library using the following command:

pip install .

Here is the directory structure:

└───module1
    ├───__init__.py
    └───mod_1.py
└───module2
    ├───__init__.py
    └───mod_2.py
__init__.py
setup.py

inside setup.py

from setuptools import setup,find_packages
setup(
    name = "my_lib",
    version="1.0.0",
    packages=find_packages(),
    python_requires='>=3.7',
    include_package_data=True,
    zip_safe=False)

Installed in:

.\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages
└───module1
    ├───____pycache__
    ├───__init__.py
    └───mod_1.py
└───module2
    ├───____pycache__
    ├───__init__.py
    └───mod_2.py
└───my_lib-1.0.0.dist-info
    ├───direct_url.json
    ├───INSTALLER
    ├───METADATA
    ├───RECORD
    ├───REQUESTED
    ├───top_level.txt
    └───WHEEL

Expected behavior/import:

from my_lib import mod_1, mod_2

Current error is:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'my_lib'

Work around:

import mod_1, mod_2

Need help with:

What do I need to change in my structure\setup.py in order to import "my_lib" as following?

from my_lib import mod_1, mod_2

>Solution :

Move module1 and module2 into a my_lib directory, and add this to my_lib/__init__.py (also note I removed the root __init__.py as it is not needed.)

from .module1 import mod_1
from .module2 import mod_2

.
├── build
│   ├── bdist.linux-aarch64
│   └── lib
│       └── my_lib
│           ├── __init__.py
│           ├── module1
│           │   ├── __init__.py
│           │   └── mod_1.py
│           └── module2
│               ├── __init__.py
│               └── mod_2.py
├── my_lib
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __pycache__
│   │   └── __init__.cpython-312.pyc
│   ├── module1
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── __pycache__
│   │   │   ├── __init__.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   │   └── mod_1.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   └── mod_1.py
│   └── module2
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── __pycache__
│       │   ├── __init__.cpython-312.pyc
│       │   └── mod_2.cpython-312.pyc
│       └── mod_2.py
├── my_lib.egg-info
│   ├── PKG-INFO
│   ├── SOURCES.txt
│   ├── dependency_links.txt
│   ├── not-zip-safe
│   └── top_level.txt
└── setup.py

13 directories, 21 files

Now the imports work as you expect

Python 3.12.0 (main, Nov 29 2023, 02:50:35) [GCC 10.2.1 20210110] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from my_lib import mod_1, mod_2
>>>