PyLint "Unable to import" error - how to set PYTHONPATH?

Question

There are two options I'm aware of.

One, change the PYTHONPATH environment variable to include the directory above your module.

Alternatively, edit ~/.pylintrc to include the directory above your module, like this:

[MASTER]
init-hook='import sys; sys.path.append("/path/to/root")'

(Or in other version of pylint, the init-hook requires you to change [General] to [MASTER])

Both of these options ought to work.

Hope that helps.

The solution to alter path in init-hook is good, but I dislike the fact that I had to add absolute path there, as result I can not share this pylintrc file among the developers of the project. This solution using relative path to pylintrc file works better for me:

[MASTER]
init-hook="from pylint.config import find_pylintrc; import os, sys; sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(find_pylintrc()))"

Note that pylint.config.PYLINTRC also exists and has the same value as find_pylintrc().

The problem can be solved by configuring pylint path under venv: $ cat .vscode/settings.json

{
    "python.pythonPath": "venv/bin/python",
    "python.linting.pylintPath": "venv/bin/pylint"
}

Do you have an empty __init__.py file in both directories to let python know that the dirs are modules?

The basic outline when you are not running from within the folder (ie maybe from pylint's, though I haven't used that) is:

topdir\
  __init__.py
  functions_etc.py
  subdir\
    __init__.py
    other_functions.py

This is how the python interpreter is aware of the module without reference to the current directory, so if pylint is running from its own absolute path it will be able to access functions_etc.py as topdir.functions_etc or topdir.subdir.other_functions, provided topdir is on the PYTHONPATH.

UPDATE: If the problem is not the __init__.py file, maybe just try copying or moving your module to c:\Python26\Lib\site-packages -- that is a common place to put additional packages, and will definitely be on your pythonpath. If you know how to do Windows symbolic links or the equivalent (I don't!), you could do that instead. There are many more options here: http://docs.python.org/install/index.html, including the option of appending sys.path with the user-level directory of your development code, but in practice I usually just symbolically link my local development dir to site-packages - copying it over has the same effect.

general answer for this question I found on this page PLEASE NOT OPEN, SITE IS BUGED

create .pylintrc and add

[MASTER]
init-hook="from pylint.config import find_pylintrc;
import os, sys; sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(find_pylintrc()))"

1) sys.path is a list.

2) The problem is sometimes the sys.path is not your virtualenv.path and you want to use pylint in your virtualenv

3) So like said, use init-hook (pay attention in ' and " the parse of pylint is strict)

[Master]
init-hook='sys.path = ["/path/myapps/bin/", "/path/to/myapps/lib/python3.3/site-packages/", ... many paths here])'

or

[Master]
init-hook='sys.path = list(); sys.path.append("/path/to/foo")'

.. and

pylint --rcfile /path/to/pylintrc /path/to/module.py

I've added a new file pylintrc in the project's root directory with

[MASTER]
init-hook='import sys; sys.path.append(".")'

and it works for me in PyCharm IDE