How to do relative imports in Python without sys.path.append neither -m falg neither with __init__.py file?

Question

I know that python mechanism doesn't allow doing relative imports without a known parent package, but I want to know which the reason is.

If relative imports worked without known parent package it would make developers life much easier (I think, correct me if I am wrong)

Example:

From a python script a have to import a global definitions file. Right now I have to do it like this:

DEFS_PATH = '../../../'
sys.path.append(DEFS_PATH)
import DEFINITIONS as defs

If I could import this file just like this without having to specify the -m flag when executing the script or creating a __init__.py file that collects all packages. It would make everything much more easier.

from .... import DEFINITIONS as defs

Of course doing this raises the famous import error:

Obviously this is a toy example, but imagine having to repeat this in hundreds of python scripts ...

Is there any workaround for importing relative packages without a known parent package that doesn't involve tha hacky ugly way ( sys.path.append(...) or python -m myscript )?

Answer 1

I solved this problem but in a different way. I have a folder where I have lots of global functions that I used in different packages, I could create a Python Package of this folder, however I would have to rebuild it each time I changed something.

The solution that fitted me was to add user-packages.pth file in site-packages directory of my current environment, but it could also be added to global site-packages folder. Inside this user-packages.pth I added the absolute path to my directory where all the global utils are. And now I just have to do from any python script

from utils import data_processing as dp
from utils.database import database_connection as dc

Now I don't need to add in each file sys.path.append("path/to/myutils/")

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Note:

The .pth file could have any file name ( customName.pth ) and paths inside the file should be separated by carriage return ("\n"). Also, paths should be absoulte.

For example:

C:\path\to\utils1
C:\path\to\other\utils2