Nested ModuleNotFound

sys.path is a list of directories (or zip archives) to find imports. “The first entry in the module search path is the directory that contains the input script … Otherwise it’s the current directory”*

With the following project layout:

|- main.py #from tools import tools. OK!
|- tools # module
   | __init__.py
   | tools.py
|- scripts
   | __init__.py
   | use_tools.py #from tools import tools **ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'tools'
|- .venv #virtual env directory

main.py and scripts/use_tools.py both import from tools/tools.py

However only python scripts/use_tools.py results in a ModuleNotFoundError. Below are the search paths when executing the script.

sys.path = [
    '~/sandbox/courses/langchain/ice_breaker/scripts', #directory of input script
    '~/.asdf/installs/python/3.13.2/lib/python313.zip', #stdlib
    '~/.asdf/installs/python/3.13.2/lib/python3.13', #stdlib
    '~/.asdf/installs/python/3.13.2/lib/python3.13/lib-dynload', #stdlib
    '~/sandbox/courses/langchain/ice_breaker/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages' #venv
]

Python will search for the tools module in

1. current working directory of the source file i.e. scripts

2. check PYTHONPATH

3. lastly, it will check python installation specific directories and activated virtualenv paths for standard-libs and site-packages (always use one)

To fix the issue you can use PYTHONPATH environment variable to add additional directories to sys.path.

Here it’s being done in the virtual environment’s activate script

# .venv/bin/activate 

deactivate () {
    # reset old environment variables
    if [ -n "${_OLD_VIRTUAL_PYTHONPATH:-}" ] ; then
        PATH="${_OLD_VIRTUAL_PYTHONPATH:-}"
        export PATH
        unset _OLD_VIRTUAL_PYTHONPATH
    fi
}

_OLD_VIRTUAL_PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH"
export PYTHONPATH="$PWD:$PYTHONPATH"

May your modules now be found.

Happy hackin’w

References

• The initialization of the sys.path module search path

• PYTHONPATH