Name spacing your modules in Python

Question

I have several repos that I want to name space. All of the repos follow the standard Python folder structures where

repo1 - repo1 - __init__.py

Outermost repo1 folder is the root folder and the inner repo1 folder is the root of the module. All of these repos will be installed using

pip install -e .

Currently, import statements like the following is used to import these modules.

import repo1
import repo2
import repo3

Is there a way to name space these modules so that I can have

import mymodule.repo1
import mymodule.repo2
import mymodule.repo3

I have to achieve the name spacing while keeping the repos separate. Merging the repos is not an option at this moment.

Answer 1

Implementation details depends on your needs for version support and distribution, but take a look at setuptools namespace_packages, this will do the work.

As pointed above, packaging site has an useful page on namespaced packaging.

---

Example for native namespaces (python >=3.3). Project layout for isolated repos:

project_root1
├── finance_namespace  # no __init__ file here, this is important
│   └── repo1
│       ├── __init__.py  
│       └── module1.py
└── setup.py

===============================

# setup.py
import setuptools

setuptools.setup(
    name='repo1',
    version='1',
    description='',
    long_description='',
    author='Big bank',
    author_email='[email protected]',
    license='MIT',
    packages=['finance_namespace.repo1'],
    zip_safe=False,
)

Now, by making cd project_root1 && pip install -e . you should be able to do

>>> from finance_namespace.repo1 import module1
>>> module1.func()