Running a python package [duplicate]

Question

Running Python 2.6.1 on OSX, will deploy to CentOS. Would like to have a package to be invoked from a command line like this:

python [-m] tst 

For that, here is the directory structure made:

$PYTHONPATH/     tst/         __init__.py     # empty         __main__.py     # below         dep.py          # below 

The following is in the files:

$ cat tst/__main__.py from .dep import DepClass  print "Hello there"  $ cat tst/dep.py class DepClass(object):     pass  $ 

However, python gives me conflicting diagnostic:

$ python -m tst /usr/bin/python: tst is a package and cannot be directly executed 

OK, so it is recognized as a package. So I should be able to run it as a script? It has __main__...

$ python tst Traceback (most recent call last):   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/runpy.py", line 121, in _run_module_as_main     "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/runpy.py", line 34, in _run_code     exec code in run_globals   File "/Users/vdidenko/Code/emi/tst/__main__.py", line 1, in <module>     from .dep import DepClass ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package 

At this point I am lost. Why non-package? And how to structure the code then?

Answer 1

The feature to run the __main__ module of a package when using the command line -m option was introduced in Python 2.7. For 2.6 you need to specify the package module name to run; -m test.__main__ should work. See the documentation here.