Setting up configuration for all invocations of python is described in the Python3 docs here.

import site
site.getusersitepackages()
# '/home/benrudgers/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages'

This file is the source for startup.py which could be invoked for my BASH sessions based on the configuration in ~/.profile:

export PYTHONSTARTUP="$HOME/python/startup/startup.py

Unfortuneately, this doesn't seem to really help Emacs and while there is probably a setting somewhere, it is simpler to sudo nano the configuration into /etc/environment as:

PYTHONSTARTUP="/home/benrudgers/python/startup/startup.py

Of course, this probably isn't the best solution if I were using lots of users. Fortunately, I probably came to Linux to late in life to have developed craziness in that regard. Email accounts are another story…but I digress and isn't that what literate programming is for?

There are more descriptions of how to do this than you can shake a stick at. The top answer is:

import importlib.util
spec = importlib.util.spec_from_file_location("module.name", "/path/to/file.py")
foo = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec)
spec.loader.exec_module(foo)
foo.MyClass()

The simple answer isthe one I want for using the Python REPL:

import sys
# the mock-0.3.1 dir contains testcase.py, testutils.py & mock.py
sys.path.append('/foo/bar/mock-0.3.1')

If I am going to use Python, I want it to help me use my computer and not merely program it. Sometimes I just want commands instead of objects…but I suppose I will settle for command like functions.

import os
from os import getcwd as pwd
from os import chdir as cd
from os import listdir as ls
from os import mkdir as mkdir

using is a module designed to capture some of the silky goodness of the :use keyword in Common Lisp's defpackage. It is located here.

from sys import path as path
path.append('/home/benrudgers/python/using')
from using import using as using