I’m writing a python package that I would like to distribute as a standalone terminal app. The structure of the project folder is the following:

energy-monitor/
– config/
– doc/
– tests/
– energymonitor/
---- init.py -> (empty)
---- main.py -> def main()
---- data/
---- …other packages…
– project.toml

I’m using setuptools to generate a .tar.gz archive, some relevant parts of the project.toml file are:

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools>=68.0"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

[project]
name = "energy-monitor"
version = "0.0.1"

...

[tool.setuptools.packages.find]
where = ["energymonitor"]

[tool.setuptools.package-data]
data = ["data/*"]

[project.scripts]
energy-monitor = "energymonitor.main:main"

I generate the .tar.gz and the .whl files with the command python -m build, then I run pipx install path/to/energy-monitor.tar.gz. The installation is succesful, but when calling energy-monitor from the command line I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/mattia/.local/bin/energy-monitor", line 5, in <module>
    from energymonitor.main import main
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'energymonitor'

Why is this happening? I was not able to find any helpful solution online. It’s the first that I build a python package so sorry if the issue is trivial.

  • python version: 3.11.3
  • @breadcrumbOP
    1•1 year ago

    I tried to change both the project name, which was energy-monitor, and the package name (energymonitor) to be the same and I set both to energy_monitor, but nothing changes…but if I open the python shell in the same folder as the project I can import the energy_monitor package with no errors, as soon as I change folder it doesn’t find the package anymore. It looks like it didn’t install the package system wide, but I thought that pipx should handle these kind of things.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      Pipx is for making the script runnable system wide, not making the code importable system wide.

      Please go to a different folder, create and activate a venv, install the package and ipython, and see what you can import.

      • @breadcrumbOP
        2•1 year ago

        Yeah sorry I expressed myself wrongly, I mean that it looked like pipx didn’t install the package in the dedicated venv, and that was actually the case because I didn’t specify which packages to install in the pyproject.toml file apparently. I substituted these lines:

        [tool.setuptools.packages.find]
where = ["energymonitor"]

[tool.setuptools.package-data]
data = ["data/*"]

        with these lines:

        [tool.setuptools]
packages = ["energymonitor"]
include-package-data = true

        and it worked!