How to fix "Attempted relative import in non-package" even with __init__.py

To elaborate on Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams's answer:

The Python import mechanism works relative to the __name__ of the current file. When you execute a file directly, it doesn't have its usual name, but has "__main__" as its name instead. So relative imports don't work.

You can, as Igancio suggested, execute it using the -m option. If you have a part of your package that is meant to be run as a script, you can also use the __package__ attribute to tell that file what name it's supposed to have in the package hierarchy.

See http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0366/ for details.

Yes. You're not using it as a package.

python -m pkg.tests.core_test

It depends on how you want to launch your script.

If you want to launch your UnitTest from the command line in a classic way, that is:

python tests/core_test.py

Then, since in this case 'components' and 'tests' are siblings folders, you can import the relative module either using the insert or the append method of the sys.path module. Something like:

import sys
from os import path
sys.path.append( path.dirname( path.dirname( path.abspath(__file__) ) ) )
from components.core import GameLoopEvents

Otherwise, you can launch your script with the '-m' argument (note that in this case, we are talking about a package, and thus you must not give the '.py' extension), that is:

python -m pkg.tests.core_test

In such a case, you can simply use the relative import as you were doing:

from ..components.core import GameLoopEvents

You can finally mix the two approaches, so that your script will work no matter how it is called. For example:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if __package__ is None:
        import sys
        from os import path
        sys.path.append( path.dirname( path.dirname( path.abspath(__file__) ) ) )
        from components.core import GameLoopEvents
    else:
        from ..components.core import GameLoopEvents

You can use import components.core directly if you append the current directory to sys.path:

if __name__ == '__main__' and __package__ is None:
    from os import sys, path
    sys.path.append(path.dirname(path.dirname(path.abspath(__file__))))