Pylint doesn't find relative imports

[fnkr]

When using relative imports like

from ..user.models import User

I get these two errors:

• No name 'user' in module 'models'
• Unable to import 'user.models'

$ pylint --version
No config file found, using default configuration
pylint 1.5.4, 
astroid 1.4.4
Python 2.7.6 (default, Jun 22 2015, 17:58:13) 
[GCC 4.8.2]

[PCManticore]

Can you give more details about this, what code did you use, how did you call pylint? I tried with a demo skeleton and it works just fine.

[fnkr]

I just found out that it's a problem with my IDE, not with Pylint itself — I will report it there. Thanks for helping!

[fnkr]

My IDE is running Pylint while the file is still unsaved, and for that reason, the IDE is copying the file into a temporary directory. That's the reason Pylint doesn't find the relative imports. Is there any parameter I could use, to tell Pylint the actual location of the file, or does Pylint support read from stdin?

[PCManticore]

Hmm, no, pylint doesn't use the stdin for this, but I'm not sure there's anything we could do here if your files are in a temporary directory, which don't contain the respective imported modules.

[PCManticore]

There's nothing we can do here, I'm afraid.

[Alexx-G]

Seems like an wrapper for pylint (linter-pylint) for the Atom (text editor) has the same issue.
I've described there AtomLinter/linter-pylint#110 some details.

The point is that it works in pylint<1.5.0.

[Alexx-G]

They have the following situation. To lint a file, they firstly copy it to a temporary directory.
After they insert into PYTHONPATH path to the package of original file and path of the project.
And run pylint over that temporary file.
I have the following layout:

/project
    /main_package
         /inner_package
             file.py
             file2.py

My PYTHONPATH contains /project:/project/main_package/inner_package and the command is something like this pylint /tmp/temporary-dir/file.py

The point is that according to this it should work. And it's working with pylint<1.5.0. But with with pylint 1.5+ I receive the error described above.

Update: and file.py contains from .file2 import something which causes import-error.

@PCManticore Could you help to figure out the problem and find a workaround to this? Maybe is something wrong with PYTHONPATH.

[horta]

I have exactly the same problem. The issue might come from the fact that:

1. I'm using Anaconda python distribution;
2. Anaconda documentation strongly suggests to not use PYTHONPATH (which I don't use): http://conda.pydata.org/docs/troubleshooting.html.

[horta]

I just pull requested a feature that would solve this issue: #881