I just had a long discussion with Barry and Fred, in response to his registry proposal. We quickly decided that a Python registry is overkill for the given problem. We also quickly came up with a nice variant of Mailman's approach which will work well in a variety of cases. --> The context: You have a large complicated application that contains many modules spread over many packages, and which has many "top-level" scripts that are invoked by the user (or via CGI, for example). All the code is properly packagized, with sufficiently globally unique package names being used all over the place. --> The problem: How to get the root directory of your application (where all your packages live) on sys.path. --> The rules: Using $PYTHONPATH is right out. You can't install new files in the core Python installation directory (nor modify existing ones), so using .pth files is also out. You don't want to have to edit each of the top-level scripts of your application. You want a cross-platform solution, in particular it should be amenable to Windows. --> The assumptions: You can use a reasonably intelligent installer. All your top-level scripts are installed in a single directory (or perhaps in a small number of separate bin directories, e.g. bin and cgi-bin). --> The solution: Suppose your application (as a whole, not the individual top-level script) is called Spam -- this may well also be the name of your top-level package. Then start each top-level script with the single line import Spam_path before importing anything else. Your installer, once it knows the absolute pathname of your application's root directory, crafts a file Spam_path.py which contains code that inserts the right absolute pathname into sys.path. Your installer then installs a copy of this file (or a symbolic link to it) *in each bin directory where it installs top-level Python scripts*. Because the script's directory is first on the default path, the Spam scripts will pick up Spam_path without any help from $PYTHONPATH. --> Notes: If you are Spam's developer, you probably want to be able to use its top-level scripts without having to install them. All you need to do is create a file Spam_path.py pointing to the top of your development tree, and set $PYTHONPATH to point to the directory that contains it. (Perhaps you already have $PYTHONPATH pointing to a personal directory of Python modules you like to have accessible -- then you can just drop Spam_path.py there, or link to it from there.) Note that adding a personal directory of Python goodies is about the only use of $PYTHONPATH that I approve of -- this way, you can set $PYTHONPATH in your .profile and never have to change it. I know this doesn't resolve the relative import thread (how's that going by the way? :-) but Barry & Fred & I agree that this is the best solution to the problem stated in Barry's message to which I am following up here. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)