How do I replicate the way PyCharm is running my Python 3.4 project at the command line?

Question

My project looks like this:

running-pycharm-project-at-cmd
 - main.py
 - c
    - run_project.py
    - z
       - __init__.py
       - the_module.py
       - y
          - __init__.py
          - template.md
          - the_module_module.py
          - the_support_function.py

The contents of the .py files are shown below:

main.py

from c.run_project import run

print('running main.py...')
run()

c/run_project.py

from c.z.the_module import the_module_function, the_module_write_function

def run():
    print('Running run_project.py!')
    the_module_function()
    # write a file:
    the_module_write_function(read_file='./z/y/template.md', write_file='../README.md')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    run()

c/z/the_module.py

from c.z.y.the_module_module import the_module_module_function

def the_module_function():
    print('the_module_function is running!')
    the_module_module_function()
    pass

def the_module_write_function(read_file, write_file):
    with open(read_file, 'r') as fid:
        with open(write_file, 'w') as fid_out:
            contents = fid.read()
            contents.replace('{}', 'THE-FINAL-PRODUCT!')
            fid_out.write(contents)

c/z/y/the_module_module.py

from .the_support_function import this_support_data

def the_module_module_function():
    print('The module module function is running!')
    print("Here is support data: {}".format(this_support_data))
    pass

c/z/y/the_support_function.py

this_support_data = "I am the support data!"

GitHub repo to make replication easier: running-pycharm-project-at-cmd

The problem: in Pycharm load up the project with running-pycharm-project-at-cmd as the root. Then I right click and run the run_project.py file. Everything works fine. I cannot figure out how to run run_project.py from the command line in the same way. Creating main.py was a workaround suggested elsewhere, but it fails due to the relative references to the template file (in actual project, the y folder is a git submodule and therefore cannot have absolute references in it).

Answer 1

If you copy your main.py file into the c folder and rename it __init__.py, then you could run:

$ python -m c

The -m argument tells python to run a module or package (in this case c). Python will look in the c's folder for an __init__.py file and run that. You just need to ensure that the folder c is either in your PYTHONPATH or is a subfolder of the current working directory.