VSCode settings for search paths with PEP582 & ipykernel

Question

I used python package managers (PyFlow/PDM) which supports PEP582: packages are installed in the local directory {workspace_path}/__pypackages__/.

I added some configs in settings.json to let VSCode know how to find the packages:

{
  ...,
  "python.autoComplete.extraPaths": [
    "__pypackages__/3.7lib"
  ],
  "python.analysis.extraPaths": [
    "__pypackages__/3.7/lib"
  ]
}

I wrote some code, and the completion and inline code docs works well with above settings.

# main.py
#%% jupyter cell
import sys
print(sys.path)
import pandas as pd
print(pd.__version__)
#%% 
print("hello world")

I ran my main.py in both ways:

• Run the file with VSCode (ctrl + opt + N)
• Run the jupyter cell with ipykernel (shift + enter). VSCode asked me to install ipykernel at the first time, but it installed with pip, and not installed into __pypackages__.

but it failed and showed: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pandas'.

I check the search path with sys.path, it doesn't contain __pypackages__ for python modules:

['{$HOME}/{workspace}',
 '{$HOME}/.vscode/extensions/ms-toolsai.jupyter-2021.5.745244803/pythonFiles',
 '{$HOME}/.vscode/extensions/ms-toolsai.jupyter-2021.5.745244803/pythonFiles/lib/python',
 '{$HOME}/.pyenv/versions/3.7.10/lib/python37.zip',
 '{$HOME}/.pyenv/versions/3.7.10/lib/python3.7',
 '{$HOME}/.pyenv/versions/3.7.10/lib/python3.7/lib-dynload',
 '',
 '{$HOME}/{workspace}/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages',
 '{$HOME}/{workspace}/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IPython/extensions',
 '{$HOME}/.ipython']

My questions:

• How to configure settings.json to add search paths (__pypackages__/3.7lib) for Python modules.
• How to configure settings.json to let VSCode Jupyter server launch IPython with ipykernel installed in __pypackages__/3.7lib

Answer 1

"python.autoComplete.extraPaths": [
        "${workspaceFolder}/__pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib"
    ],
    "python.analysis.extraPaths": [
        "${workspaceFolder}/__pypackages__/<major.minor>/lib"
    ],

Try this in settings.json

Replace <major.minor> with your python version like 3.10, 3.9, etc

Answer 2

I found two ways to solve the sys.path problem.

The easiest one would be to launch VSCode with the following command:

pdm run -p <path-to-profile> code <path-to-folder-or-workspace-file>

This ensures that PYTHONPATH contains __packages__\... directories for VSCode to use.