Python module not imported despite file being there

Question

I have a python project. I have activated virtualenv for it and installed requirements.txt

Here is my files/dirs structure

.
├── app
│   ├── app.py
│   ├── modules
│   │   ├── __pycache__
│   │   ├── foo.py
│   │   ├── settings.py
│   └── requirements.txt

I am doing the following import in foo.py

import settings

VSCode does not complain (while in other erroneous import attempts it did complain)

When trying to run the program

▶ python app/app.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/project/app/app.py", line 1, in <module>
    from modules import foo
  File "/path/to/project/app/modules/foo.py", line 14, in <module>
    import settings
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'settings'
(.venv) 

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Python modules are not imported relatively out-of the box.

In foo.py, you can import `settings' using:

from . import settings
# ...

@pkaramol : in older versions of python it was necessary to create __init__.py inside modules directory to be able to use this syntax, but at least in python3.10 it is not.