Allow some auto imports to be relative and others absolute

[maxeonyx]

Hi - I have run into some frustrating behaviour with relative import suggestions. I hope this issue can be helpful.

When using a project that has multiple separate module hierarchies, it is impossible to configure the automatic imports in a way that is satisfactory.

The behaviour we want is that imports from the local module are imported relatively, and imports across modules are imported absolutely.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to get this behaviour, no matter what I set in python.analysis.include, python.analysis.exclude and python.analysis.extraPaths.

I should be able to specify which directories are expected on the python path at runtime, but this does not seem possible.

Environment data

• Pylance version: v2024.9.2
• OS and version: Fedora Linux 40 Workstation
• Python version: Python 3.12.6 (system provided)

Code Snippet

A minimal example can be found here: https://github.com/maxeonyx/pyimport-issue-minimal

To run the project, use:

PYTHONPATH=appsrc:depsrc python -m appmodule

Repro Steps

1. Clone the following repo: https://github.com/maxeonyx/pyimport-issue-minimal

2. Comment out your VSCode user settings so that they don't interfere with the workspace settings in this project.

3. Open the repo in VSCode.

4. Open appsrc/appmodule/__main__.py. Take the suggested action. The created import is not correct

Expected behavior

Relative mode

The following imports should be inserted in relative import mode:

from . import do_thing
from sharedmodule.patterns import retry

Absolute mode

The following imports should be inserted in absolute import mode:

from appmodule import do_thing
from sharedmodule.patterns import retry

Actual behavior

The following imports are what are actually inserted:

Relative mode:

from . import do_thing
from ...depsrc.sharedmodule.patterns import retry

The ...depsrc.sharedmodule.patterns import is NOT correct as per my python.analysis.* settings.

Absolute mode

This works correctly:

from appmodule import do_thing
from sharedmodule.patterns import retry

Note

Note that ...depsrc is NOT expected to be on the python path at runtime. I have set python.analysis.autoSearchPaths to false so the workspace root should not be one of the search paths.

If we have the from ...depsrc.sharedmodule.patterns import retry version, when we run with the following command, we will get ImportError: attempted relative import beyond top-level package.

PYTHONPATH=appsrc:depsrc python -m appmodule

[rchiodo]

Thanks for the issue. This would be an enhancement request, being able to specify which paths should be absolute and which are relative. Probably requiring a new setting.

[maxeonyx]

Thanks @rchiodo

[rchiodo]

Transferring to a discussion item or up votes.

[heejaechang]

@maxeonyx what you need to do is exclude: ["./depsrc"] and extrapath: ["./depsrc"], that should make any file under depsrc as non-user file but extrapath make it accessible from your other folder as third party library.

but I found some issues around it so I opened a bug - #6468

one thing. by doing this, pylance will stop indexing depsrc as user file so you need to use packageIndexDepths setting to control how much we want from it.

[maxeonyx]

@heejaechang Thanks - I have tried that actually, but as you say pylance then stops indexing it. In my example all the files in sharedmodule are user files, so I see going this direction is a workaround. Thanks for looking into this, though.

[maxeonyx]

I think there is two separate concepts here, but the current way that Pylance's settings are structured makes it hard to separate them:

• A) "Relative import possible" - which files are (expected to be) part of the same top-level python module at runtime? Which files can use relative imports to each other, without getting a relative import error?
• B) "User files vs non-user files" - should the file be indexed & type-checked, or only indexed "when necessary" to provide completions and type hints?