[code-quality] Pylint and sys path

March 12, 2015

      I have a very large project with deeply nested hierarchies. To find the
root directory I use a source root walker and append the root directory to
sys.path. This way, I can easily import things in the project relative to
the root directory.
The problem is that pylint doesn't detect this, even though I have a method
which appends the path imported in the files where the path is used. So all
my imports are marked as F0401
<http://pylint-messages.wikidot.com/messages:f0401>: Unable to import.

Is there any way to avoid this error message by getting pylint to
understand sys.path?

The __init__.py that is imported in files that need imports relative to the
root directory:

import os
import sys

def find_repo_rootdir():
    def __check_parent(topdir):
        for _, _, files in os.walk(topdir):
            if '.THIS_IS_ROOT' in files:
                return topdir
            else:
                next_ = topdir.rsplit("/", 1)
                if len(next_) == 2:
                    return __check_parent(next_[0])
                else:
                    return None
    return __check_parent(os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)))

repo_root = find_repo_rootdir()
if repo_root is not None and repo_root not in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(repo_root)

[code-quality] Pylint and sys path

Dani Hodovic