Managing Python Path When Moving Code from Development Computer to Target

Question

I have a python project with this directory structure and these files: ``` /home/project_root |---__init__.py |---setup |---__init__.py |---configs.py |---test_code |---__init__.py |---tester.py ``` The tester script imports from setup/configs.py with the reference "setup.configs". It runs fine on my development machine. This works on the development (Linux) computer. When I move this to another (Linux) computer, I set the PYTHONPATH with ``` PYTHONPATH = "/home/project_root" ``` But when I run tester.py, it can't find the configs module. And when I run the interactive Python interpreter, sys.path doesn't include the /home/project_root directory. But /home/project_root does appear when I echo $PYTHPATH. What am I doing wrong here? (I don't want to rely on the .bashrc file to set the PYTHONPATH for the target machine -- the code is for a Django application, and will eventually be run by www-data. And, I know that the apache configuration for Django includes a specification of the PYTHO…

Accepted Answer

Stick this in the tester script right before the `import setup.configs`

```
import sys
import os
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), os.path.pardir))
```

`sys.path` is a list of all the directories the python interpreter looks for when importing a python module. This will add the parent directory which contains setup module to the beginning of that list which means that the local directory will be checked first. That is important if you have your module installed system wide. More info on that here: sys doc.

EDIT: You could also put a .pth file in `/usr/local/lib/python2.X/site-packages/` A .pth file is simply a text file with a directory path on each line that the python interpreter will search in. So just add a file with this line in it:

```
/home/project_root
```

Managing Python Path When Moving Code from Development Computer to Target

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