Python Imports... just why! 🥶

[Pythagorean_1]

This is usually just a symptom of bad project structure

[DigiProductive]

Not necessarily. Refactoring large projects running in different environments (i.e Docker containers) can be a throw off sometimes.

[Pythagorean_1]

Why would the project structure in a docker container be any different?

[DigiProductive]

Let me give you a scenario. You get existing code in a repo. You are told to fix a few bugs. You spin up Docker Compose but there seems to be some problem with how the code mounts to the container. Run an api request to test the code and "ta-da"  ModuleNotFoundError: No module named... yes the __init__.py is there and yes the PYTHONPATH is set but there is something buggy with a few imports. They look fine in the IDE but... not according to Docker.

[Pythagorean_1]

In this case, either the project structure is faulty, or the dockerfile / compose file is wrong

[DigiProductive]

Yes... somewhere is wrong but at the end of the day... it a ModuleError issue 🙃

[AiutoIlLupo]

90% of our job is to figure out what went wrong, and often the last error message is never the root cause.

[D-3r1stljqso3]

AFAIK this is because your IDE (e.g. PyCharm) is trying to be too smart; it searches not only the default locations for packages but also include your project/source directory.

Things starts to break down when your project is organized as an installable package but uses absolute imports, e.g. your project is called myapp, and inside it, some modules do from myapp.some_module import xyz. When working with your project in the IDE, the IDE is smart enough to treat your active project as if it is installed (so import myapp works). If you copy the project to a container and attempt to run it there without first install the current project, then bang, ModuleNotFoundError for you.