I produced a minimal example of behavior that I thought was weird.
├── a
│ └── com
│ ├── __init__.py
│ └── x
│ ├── __init__.py
│ └── test1.py
└── b
└── com
├── __init__.py
└── x
├── __init__.py
└── test2.py
In the prior filestructure I set my working directory to the one that contains 'a' and 'b'. Then I run
# Works
python3 -c "import sys; sys.path = ['a', 'b']; import com.x.test1"
# Error
python3 -c "import sys; sys.path = ['a', 'b']; import com.x.test2"
For the second example, it seems that the first sys path entry matches the common prefix, but when it ultimately can't find module test2 it errors out. I would have expected python to resolve it by matching the module prefix in the next sys path entry and finding the module in the b folder. Why doesn't it work like this? Seems like this makes it really hard for multiple packages in an organization with the same namespace to collaborate.