'ModuleNotFoundError' when trying to import script from imported script

Question

My folder structure:

ttsTacotron.py
Tacotron-2
|..
|tacotron|
 |train.py
 |synthetizer.py
 |...
|synthesize.py # imports hparams.py
|hparams.py
...

When I call synthesize.py directly it works fine, all of its imports get processed successfully. When I import synthesize in the ttsTacotron.py and call it, it fails on importing synthesize's modules. Specifically, it fails on importing hparams.

ttsTacotron.py:

import fire
import sys
import os
import importlib 
foobar = importlib.import_module("Tacotron-2.synthesize")

Tacotron folder in question is this repository but the issue is unlikely to be specific to it.

Remarks: I use importlib to handle having - in the subfolder. Can't really rename it for various reasons.

My goal: Be able to call synthetize's methods & be able to import tacotron modules from a script that is in the root folder.

Answer 1

This is because, when running ttsTacotron.py, Python looks up all non-relative imported modules in the directory containing ttsTacotron.py (and in the system module directories, which isn't relevant here), yet hparams.py is in the Tacotron-2 directory. The simplest fix is probably to add Tacotron-2 to the list of directories in which modules are looked up; this also eliminates the need to use importlib.

import sys
sys.path.insert(1, 'Tacotron-2')
import synthesize as foobar