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Issue migrated (2015-06-05) from old issue tracker http://mirrorbrain.org/issues/issue69

Title    mb Python module's name can get into the way
 Priority   bug         Status     chatting
Superseder            Nosy List    fukawi2, poeml
Assigned To poeml      Keywords    Packaging

msg264 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2010-09-19.01:13:25

The Python module's name "mb" can get into the way when it is being installed,
because it has the same name as the script "mb" / "mb.py".

This can lead to a very puzzling problem: Imports fail for mysterious reasons. I
have wasted a lot of time into debugging this pitfall in the past (in other
situations).

The issue is that the script "mb.py" imports the module named "mb", which leads to
importing itself instead of the module. This seems to happen when the script exists
with its ending ".py". The current directory is always the first in the search path
in Python, that's why.

This can be very hard to find out (as I learnt the hard way).

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=825860

Maybe the script should be named mb-commandline.py instead; when packaging it, a
link named "mb" could be added.

The only other solution (I think) would be to rename the module (e.g. to Mb).

msg265 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2010-09-19.01:17:02

Just a note, starting such a script with "python -v" as interpreter would display
all imported files, which can elucidate this problem.

History
         Date         User  Action        Args
2010-09-19 01:17:03 poeml set    messages: + msg265
2010-09-19 01:13:25 poeml create

(end of migrated issue)