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What's the best practice to make a directory an importable package?

I created a few utility functions, all put into a folder, and later I created some scripts which import the functions in that folder, please see the following the structure of files,
root
|-- myutils (folder with util python files)
| |-- __init__.py (empty)
| |-- utils1.py
| |-- utils2.py (utils1 is imported by utils2)
|
|-- myscripts
| |-- hello.py (try to import utils1 and utils2)
Now the problem is I cannot import utils1/utils2 inside hello.py, here is what I tried
# This is hello.py
import sys
sys.path.append("root") # so that we can search root and find myutils
import myutils # import myutils, this is OK and no errors
x = myutils.utils1.foo() # ERROR: module 'myutils' has no attribute 'utils1'
How could I fix the error and what's the best practice for my use-case here?

How to import modules in Python framework with multiple subfolder

My question might have discussed in earlier posts too, but couldn't get proper answer applicable for my scenario. Hence posting it as a new query.
I have multiple sub-folders where module tries to import modules present across multiple subfolders.
Folder Structure:
main
|-- lib
| |-- lib1.py
| |-- lib2.py
| `-- lib3.py
|-- common
| |-- lib4.py
|-- tests
| |--folder1
| |-- script1.py
| |-- folder2
| |-- script2.py
| |--scriptA.py
| `--scriptB.py
Use case/Requirements:
script1 & script2 import functions from module lib1.py.
lib1 wants to import functions from lib2.py & lib3.py
lib4.py import funtions from lib1 & lib2
I tried adding blank __init__.py in root folder (main) and the all other subfolders. But couldn't get this working. Ending up with 'ModuleNotFound' error.

You need blank __init__.py files, not init.py. See the python documentation for more info.

Make rope project aware of core libraries

I'm working on a large code base and I'd like to set up rope projects so that rope is fast and does what I want. For what it's worth, I'm using rope with emacs, but if I understand correctly, rope's behavior should be independent of the editor.
The code base has many core libraries used by many apps. Each app depends on one or more core libraries but never on another app. Here's a simplified representation of the directory structure:
repo
|-- core
| |--CoreLib1
| | |-- CoreLib1.egg-info
| | `-- library_module
| | |-- __init__.py
| | `-- lib.py
| `--CoreLib2
| |-- CoreLib2.egg-info
| `-- library_module
| |-- __init__.py
| `-- lib.py
`-- apps
|-- AppA
| |-- AppA.egg-info
| `-- app_a_module
| |-- __init__.py
| `-- src.py
|-- AppB
| |-- AppB.egg-info
| `-- app_b_module
| |-- __init__.py
| `-- src.py
`-- AppC
|-- AppC.egg-info
`-- app_c_module
|-- __init__.py
`-- src.py
What I want to do
Currently I have repo/.ropeproject, and rope behaves how I want, but is slow. I believe the slowness is because it's analyzing all the code in all the apps at any given time. To solve this, I'm trying to create a rope project in each app (e.g. /repo/apps/AppA/.ropeproject) that knows about core but doesn't know about the other apps. The problem is, I can't get it to know about core. This means I can't do any rope operations on any names from core.
Works, but is slow:
Make sure there are no .ropeproject directories in the whole code base. Create a rope project in /repo/.
Put the following code in /repo/.ropeproject/config.py:
src_dirs = [
dirpath
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk('core/')
if any(map(lambda dirname: dirname.endswith('.egg-info'), dirnames))
]
for src_dir in src_dirs:
prefs.add('python_path', src_dir)
Reload the rope project (to make sure it's using the freshly updated config.py)
Rope Generate Autoimport Cache. This takes upwards of 60 seconds and can't run in the background.
While editing repo/apps/AppA/app_a_module/src.py, attempt to use rope to auto-import a name from core. It works.
Fast, but doesn't work:
Make sure there are no .ropeproject directories in the whole code base. Create a rope project in /repo/apps/AppA/.
Put the following code in apps/AppA/.ropeproject/config.py:
src_dirs = [
dirpath
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk('../../core/')
if any(map(lambda dirname: dirname.endswith('.egg-info'), dirnames))
]
for src_dir in src_dirs:
prefs.add('python_path', src_dir)
Reload the rope project (to make sure it's using the freshly updated config.py)
Rope Generate Autoimport Cache. This takes less than 1 second.
While editing repo/apps/AppA/app_a_module/src.py, attempt to use rope to auto-import a name from core. It fails.
Is what I want to do within the scope of rope's capabilities? Should it be able to work? If so, what am I doing wrong?

Setting up Python path during development

I work on a couple of different programs and packages in Python. They are each developed in their own Git repository, but frequently need to import modules defined in other packages. For instance, during development, the directory structure looks something like:
src/
|-- project-a/
| |-- client.py
| |-- server.py
| |-- package-a
| |-- __init__.py
| |-- module.py
|-- project-b/
| |-- package-b
| | |-- __init__.py
| | |-- other_module.py
| |-- package-c
| |-- __init__.py
| |-- third_module.py
|-- project-c/
|-- server1.py
|-- server2.py
|-- package-d/
|-- package-e/
|-- package-f/
When they are all installed, they work fine; they are all installed such that each package is in your Python path, and you can import from them as you need.
However, in development, I want the development version of each of these to be in my Python path, not the installed version. When making changes, I don't want to have to install each package that I'm changing to test it, I want the changes to take effect immediately. That means my Python path needs to include the directories project-a, project-b, etc.
Our current solution is just to have an environment.bash in the top level, which you source in your shell and it sets PYTHONPATH. That works OK, but I frequently forget to do so; since this is a client server application, with communications between servers, I need to have at least four windows open to different VMs to run this, and it happens pretty often that I forget to source environment.bash in at least one of those, leading me to try debugging strange behavior until I realize I'm importing the wrong things.
Another solution would be to set sys.path from within the top level client.py or server.py. This would work fine for launching them directly, but I would also need the path set up for running tools like Pylint or Sphinx, which that solution wouldn't cover. I'd also need a way to distinguish between running from source (when I want the path to include . and ../project-b) and running the installed version (which should use the standard path without modification).
Another choice would be to have a Makefile which sets up PYTHONPATH appropriately for various targets like make run-server, make lint, make doc, and so on. That's OK for those targets, which don't require any options, but would be inconvenient for running the client, which takes arguments. make run-client ARGS='foo bar' is a fairly cumbersome way to invoke it.
Is there any common way of setting up the Python path during development so that both my executables and tools like Pylint and Sphinx can pick it up appropriately, without interfering with how it will behave when installed?

A straightforward solution would be to simply symlink in the directories for each module in a separate folder, and run things from there. That way Python sees them all being in the same location, even though the actual sources are in different repositories.
src/
|-- project-a/
| |-- client.py
| |-- server.py
| |-- package-a
| |-- __init__.py
| |-- module.py
|-- project-b/
|-- package-b
| |-- __init__.py
| |-- other_module.py
|-- package-c
|-- __init__.py
|-- third_module.py
run/
|-- client.py --> ../src/project-a/client.py
|-- server.py --> ../src/project-a/server.py
|-- package-a/ --> ../src/project-a/package-a/
|-- package-b/ --> ../src/project-b/package-b/
|-- package-c/ --> ../src/project-b/package-c/

How to structure a python projects with shared sub apps using git and buidout without symbolic links

I have multiple projects that shares child apps with other projects.
When working within the project directory I want to be able to make changes to the app, update it, and pull those updates into the second project.
Requirement:
No use of symbolic links (my IDE's debugger doesn't work well with them)
No compiling/rerun a script. I would like to make changes to the app without having to rerun a script/buildout.
Apps must be within the project folder.
Here's the structure:
app_one (git repo)
|-- app_one (actual app uses by projects)
| +-- models.py
|-- README.md
+-- setup.py
project_one (git repo)
|-- project_one
| |-- apps
| | |-- app_one
| | | +-- models.py
| | | -- app_two
|-- setup.cfg
+-- setup.py
project_two (git repo)
|-- project_two
| |-- apps
| | |-- app_one (same app as project_one)
| | | +-- models.py
| | | -- app_two
|-- setup.cfg
+-- setup.py
Currently I'm using git-submodules for this; the downside is there is no way to link to a subfolder of a repo. I recently read about subtree, would this work better?
Ideally I would like to use buildout, but I haven't found a good way to accomplish this without the use of symbolic links. If there's a way to to do this please let me know.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

mr.developer. When a mr.developer source is checked out and activated, it becomes a setuptools/distribute develop egg in the buildout and so the checkout will be what is used by any scripts (such as a zc.recipe.egg generated python interpreter) in the buildout.