Running module from ipython interpreter instead of command line

Question

I'm working on a package, and I have a structure like:

 mypackage/
    __init__.py
    __main__.py
    someotherstuff.py
    test/
        __init__.py
        testsomeotherstuff.py

I've set it up so that the main.py function runs some unit tests, and executing python mypackage from the command-line works fine. However often I want to debut using ipython, but from the interpreter, run mypackage gives the error ERROR: File 'mypackage.py' not found. I can run it manually by doing run mypackage/__main__.py but somehow this seems wrong. Is there something else I should have done to set this up correctly?

The ability to do %run -m mypackage was added in a recent version - I don't know if that works for your case. — Thomas K
– Thomas K, Commented Mar 9, 2012 at 17:26

Sven Marnach · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-09 15:56:39Z

8

Running a package as a program was introduced in Python 2.5. I don't think IPython has a native feature for this, but starting with version 2.7, the Python standard library has, namely the runpy.run_module() function. Note that this behaves slightly different than IPython's %run, since it will return the global dictionary of the module instead of directly importing it into the interpreter scope.

edited Mar 9, 2012 at 15:56

answered Mar 9, 2012 at 15:44

Sven Marnach

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5 Comments

tdc Over a year ago

That gives me an error: ImportError: mypackage is a package and cannot be directly executed

Sven Marnach Over a year ago

@tdc: What Python version are you using?

tdc Over a year ago

Python 2.6.5 - which makes it odd that it runs from the command line then?

JuanPi Over a year ago

In Python 3.11 I do runpy.run_module("mypkg.my_module", run_name=__name__) to run the code inside the __main__ section of a submodule. I cannot manage to pass arguments (in sys.argv), though

Sven Marnach Over a year ago

@JuanPi Modules look at sys.argv themselves for their command line options. Since this is where they look, you need to modify sys.argv before calling run_module() to pass in arguments. This isn't the prettiest thing to do, since you pass parameters via global state, but in general the only alternative is forking a new interpreter.

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