Better error message for circular import

[SMMousavi (Mohammad Mousavi)]

I am working on a large and complex project, after adding some changes and importing a bunch of modules, I am getting an error for circular import:

AttributeError: partially initialized module 'module_a' has no attribute 'my_attribute' (most likely due to a circular import)

While I do understand why this error happens, I cannot resolve the issue easily as the project is very complex and I cannot figure out where the loop is happening. Is there a possibility of requesting a feature for providing a better error message to help identify the loop?

Some discussions about adding this feature for PyCharm IDE, but I believe it would be more beneficial for everyone if it were a directly introduced in Python:
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-38694

[elis.byberi]

@SMMousavi

I cannot figure out where

Does it mean there is no Traceback (most recent call last): ?

[kknechtel (Karl Knechtel)]

@SMMousavi

as the project is very complex and I cannot figure out where the loop is happening. Is there a possibility of requesting a feature for providing a better error message to help identify the loop?

That’s what the stack trace is for: it shows you all the import statements that are in progress when the error occurs, so you can follow them to see what got imported from where to cause the problem.

[elis.byberi]

Moving this to Help because it suggests an IDE feature being added to the Python language itself.