Installation

As usual, install using pip:

$ pip install ipython-autoimport  # from PyPI
$ pip install git+https://github.com/anntzer/ipython-autoimport  # from Github

Then, append the output of python -m ipython_autoimport to the ipython_config.py file in the directory printed by ipython profile locate (typically ~/.ipython/profile_default/). If you don’t have such a file at all, first create it with ipython profile create.

When using Spyder, the above registration method will not work; instead, add %load_ext ipython_autoimport to the Preferences → IPython console → Startup → Run code option.

Note that upon loading, ipython_autoimport will register its submodule auto-importer to IPython’s “limited evalutation” completer policy (on IPython versions that support it).

Run tests with pytest.

Limitations

Constructs such as

class C:
   auto_imported_value

will not work, because they are run using the class locals (rather than the patched locals); patching globals would not work because LOAD_NAME queries globals using PyDict_GetItem exactly (note that it queries locals using PyObject_GetItem; also, LOAD_GLOBALS queries both globals and builtins using PyObject_GetItem so we could possibly get away with patching the builtins dict instead, but that seems a bit too invasive…).

When using Jedi autocompletion (the default if Jedi is installed as of IPython 7.2), trying to tab-complete not-yet-imported global names to trigger an import failure, because Jedi purposefully converts the global dict to a namespace object and looks up attributes using getattr_static. Jedi can be disabled by adding c.Completer.use_jedi = False to the ipython_config.py file.

Changelog