Code organization for a shelf tool and python library

[andersc]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to Houdini scripting, but I've written tools/scripts for many other vfx applications. Many thing seems very straight forward, but I haven't found any good recources to handle shelf-tools and my own python libraries.

I'll try to describe what I'm looking to do:

First of all I've added a custom directory to the houdini.env file so I can store my tools on a server (global location for all artists). In that location I'm trying to add a custom tool.
 

houdini_tools

    toolbar
        magic_shelf.shelf
        magic_tool1.shelf
        magic_tool2.shelf

    tools
        magic
            __init__.py
            importers.py
            exporters.py
            utils.py

 

Questions:

1. What do I add in my magic_tool1.shelf so I can for example run code that is in magic.importers? I don't want to sys.path.append(<path>), I want it to be dynamic.

2. Can I make the whole thing more "self contained"? I want to share my "magic" tool to others, so it would be great if I could have it all under a single directory, i.e magic_tools. How would users "install" this?

[andersc]

I think I found my answers. Posting here in case anyone else have trouble.

 

1. Just place the code in a scripts/python directory that is in houdini's search paths. (I think?)

2. Packages. I had a look at this example: https://github.com/lukevanlukevan/LV-Tools