How To Import Lib Folder Within Modules

I had a GAE app which contains three Modules and a lib folder. When I tried to import the 3rd party library from the lib folder. GAE pops a ImportError. I could get it to work by s

Solution 1:

Credit goes to Google Cloud Platform Tech Solutions Representative Adam:

Modules documentations may not be explicitly stated, but the folder 'Module1', 'Module2' as well as the default module actually run inside separate Python virtual environments on separate instances and need to be self contained. They cannot 'see' any directories above them which exist on the local filesystem, and 'default.py' can't see anything in each of the module directories. The whole folder tree isn't copied to each module instance.

He suggested that instead of making symlinks, just copy ./lib to each of the modules.

I do not like the idea very much.

Firstly, these modules share some base class, duplicating them is really an anti-pattern.

Secondly, copying the lib folders everywhere corrupts unit tests as nose will try to run all unit tests it can run, also because it's a pain to explicitly exclude the directories.

At the end of the day, I wrote a makefile to help deployment / testing easier...

# Create simlinks before deployment.deploy: mksimlnks
    appcfg.py --oauth2 update $(CURDIR)/app.yaml
    appcfg.py --oauth2 update $(CURDIR)/MODULE_1/module_1.yaml
    appcfg.py --oauth2 update $(CURDIR)/MODULE_2/module_2.yaml
    appcfg.py --oauth2 update_queues $(CURDIR)mksimlnks:
    ln -s $(CURDIR)/lib $(CURDIR)/MODULE_1/lib
    ln -s $(CURDIR)/lib $(CURDIR)/MODULE_2/lib

# Need to remove symlinks before unittest# or unit test will explode.test: rmsimlnks
    nosetests --exclude-dir=lib --with-gae -w $(CURDIR) --with-coverage --cover-html

# Remove all symlinksrmsimlnks:
    rm -rf $(shell find * -type l)# remove symlinks and other stuffclean: rmsimlnks
    rm -f $(shell find * -name *.pyc)
    rm -f $(shell find * -name .DS_Store)
    rm -f .coverage
    rm -rf $(CURDIR)/cover