Celery import error

Question

I am hitting an import error in starting celery. This is confusing, because this was working a few days ago, and git shows nothing changed. I think celery's heuristics for import directories are colliding with my split-out setting structure, and maybe my path/env is different than it was when the invokation was working? How should I tweak my invokation or environment to help celery load all of its downstream imports? This is Celery 3.1.7 and Django 1.6.

My invokation:

celery worker --app=proj.proj

The error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/bin/celery", line 8, in <module>
    load_entry_point('celery==3.1.7', 'console_scripts', 'celery')()
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/__main__.py", line 30, in main
    main()
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 80, in main
    cmd.execute_from_commandline(argv)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 723, in execute_from_commandline
    super(CeleryCommand, self).execute_from_commandline(argv)))
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 303, in execute_from_commandline
    return self.handle_argv(self.prog_name, argv[1:])
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 715, in handle_argv
    return self.execute(command, argv)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 669, in execute
    ).run_from_argv(self.prog_name, argv[1:], command=argv[0])
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/worker.py", line 175, in run_from_argv
    return self(*args, **options)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 266, in __call__
    ret = self.run(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/worker.py", line 208, in run
    state_db=self.node_format(state_db, hostname), **kwargs
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/worker/__init__.py", line 95, in __init__
    self.app.loader.init_worker()
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/loaders/base.py", line 128, in init_worker
    self.import_default_modules()
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/loaders/base.py", line 121, in import_default_modules
    tuple(maybe_list(self.app.conf.CELERY_INCLUDE))
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/loaders/base.py", line 103, in import_task_module
    return self.import_from_cwd(module)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/loaders/base.py", line 112, in import_from_cwd
    package=package,
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/utils/imports.py", line 101, in import_from_cwd
    return imp(module, package=package)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/loaders/base.py", line 106, in import_module
    return importlib.import_module(module, package=package)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 37, in import_module
    __import__(name)
  File "/home/ben/Projects/proj/proj/proj/matches/management/tasks/valve_api_calls.py", line 9, in <module>
    from matches.models import Match, LobbyType, GameMode,\
  File "/home/ben/Projects/proj/proj/proj/matches/models.py", line 1, in <module>
    from django.db import models
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/__init__.py", line 11, in <module>
    if settings.DATABASES and DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS not in settings.DATABASES:
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 53, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 48, in _setup
    self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 134, in __init__
    raise ImportError("Could not import settings '%s' (Is it on sys.path?): %s" % (self.SETTINGS_MODULE, e))
ImportError: Could not import settings 'proj.settings.local' (Is it on sys.path?): No module named settings.local

My project looks like:

proj <git root>
└──proj <project root>
   └── manage.py
   └── proj <project app>
       └── celery_app.py
       └── settings
           └── local.py

My env vars are:

DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=proj.settings.local
DJANGO_PROJECT_DIR=/home/ben/Projects/proj/proj/proj

EDIT: I am using virtualenv, so my $PATH on startup looks like

PATH=/home/ben/.virtualenvs/proj/bin:
/usr/local/heroku/bin:/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm:
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:
/usr/sbin:
/usr/bin:
/sbin:
/bin:
/usr/games:
/usr/local/games

Answer 1

My virtualenv got corrupted somehow. A new virtualenv with identical env vars and installed software works.

Answer 2

You celery's using the wrong working directory, so it cannot find relative path proj.settings.local

Try modifying your setting to DJANGO_PROJECT_DIR=/home/ben/Projects/proj/proj and see if it works.