CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlinux
ilFonta
ilFonta

Reputation: 301

Setting environmental path for Python in Ubuntu

I'd like to collect all the functions I wrote in Python and store them in a folder. I'm an Ubuntu user, what environmental path do I have to add in my ~/.profile?

I tried

export PATH:$PATH:/home/functionFolder

or

export PYTHONPATH:/home/functionFolder

I also added an init.py file in the /home/functionFolder, but it doesn't work.

My aim is to import the functions with

from myFunctions import function1

with myFunctions located in /home/functionFolder.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 8817

Answers (3)

9769953
9769953

Reputation: 12201

Python makes uses of a specific user-related directory for storing packages and modules that are installed by and for that user only (that is, not system-wide). The place for modules and packages is

$HOME/.local/lib/pythonx.y/site-packages/<module-or-package>

Where x.y denotes the relevant Python version, e.g. 3.9, and <module-or-package> is the .py file for a module, and a directory for the package. (Note that this means you can use multiple minor Python versions next to each other without them interfering, but you do have install packages for each minor Python version separately.)

This directory is automatically picked up by Python when the relevant user uses Python; no need to involve PYTHONPATH.

pip also installs into this directory, when you specify the --user flag; or when pip finds it can't install in the system directory and it will use the $HOME/.local directory instead.

If you have installable packages, you can even use pip install . --user or similar to install the packages properly in $HOME/.local

Upvotes: 1

Muhammad Mohsin Khan
Muhammad Mohsin Khan

Reputation: 1476

You can do it by adding the following commands to your .bashrc file which is located in ~/:

PYTHONPATH=/home/functionFolder/:$PYTHONPATH
export PYTHONPATH

once you have added the above commands in the .bashrc file, save it and type following in your console:

source ~/.bashrc

afterward, you can access and import your functions anywhere.

Upvotes: 1

AKX
AKX

Reputation: 168967

Do not mess with PYTHONPATH. It will lead to hard-to-debug situations, non-portable code and general misery. (If you really, really want to, you could mess with it within your program with e.g. sys.path.insert(0, '...'), but that's also non-portable.)

If you want to maintain a personal toolbox library, it's better to just make it a package you can install. This will also pave the way to making it distributable later on should you want to.

The canonical guide to packaging Python libraries lives here at packaging.python.org but the very simplest tl;dr edition (at the time of writing) is:

  1. This assumes
    • you have a project directory, e.g. /home/me/project
    • there is a package directory in the project directory, e.g. if your package is named myFunctions, you have a myFunctions/__init__.py
    • you know how to use virtualenvs for your other projects
  2. Add pyproject.toml to /home/me/project with the contents listed below.
  3. Add setup.cfg to /home/me/project with the contents listed below.
  4. Now, in a project virtualenv where you want to use myFunctions, run pip install -e /home/me/project. This will install the package that lives in that path in editable mode, i.e. just link that folder into the project's environment.

pyproject.toml

[build-system]
requires = [
    "setuptools>=42",
    "wheel"
]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

setup.cfg

[metadata]
name = myFunctions

[options]
packages = find:

Upvotes: 1

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