How to fix my imports/file structure

[Travis Griggs]

I wrote a simple set of python3 files for emulating a small set of mongodb features on a 32 bit platform. I fired up PyCharm and put together a directory that looked like:

minu/
    client.py
    database.py
    collection.py
    test_client.py
    test_database.py
    test_client.py

My imports are simple. For example, client.py has the following at the top:

    from collection import Collection

Basically, client has a Client class, collection has a Collection class, and database has a Database class. Not too tough.

As long as I cd into the minu directory, I can fire up a python3 interpreter and do things like:

    >>> from client import Client
    >>> c = Client(pathstring='something’)

And everything just works. I can run the test_files as well, which use the same sorts of imports.

I'd like to modularize this, so I can use it another project by just dropping the minu directory alongside my application's .py files and just have everything work. E.g.

    SomeDirectory/
        application.py
        minu/
            …

and application.py does something like:

    from minu.client import Client

When I try this though, and am running python3 from another directory, the local imports don't work. I placed an empty init.py in the minu directory. That made it so I could import minu. But the others broke. I tried using things like 

    from .collection import Collection #added the dot

but then I can't run things in the original directory anymore, like I could before. What is the simple/right way to do this?

I have looked around a bit with Dr. Google, but none of the examples really clarify this well (at least, for me), feel free to point out the one I missed.