How to retrieve a module's path?

Question

I want to detect whether module has changed. Now, using inotify is simple, you just need to know the directory you want to get notifications from.

How do I retrieve

Answer 1

From within modules of a python package I had to refer to a file that resided in the same directory as package. Ex.

some_dir/
  maincli.py
  top_package/
    __init__.py
    level_one_a/
      __init__.py
      my_lib_a.py
      level_two/
        __init__.py
        hello_world.py
    level_one_b/
      __init__.py
      my_lib_b.py

So in above I had to call maincli.py from my_lib_a.py module knowing that top_package and maincli.py are in the same directory. Here's how I get the path to maincli.py:

import sys
import os
import imp


class ConfigurationException(Exception):
    pass


# inside of my_lib_a.py
def get_maincli_path():
    maincli_path = os.path.abspath(imp.find_module('maincli')[1])
    # top_package = __package__.split('.')[0]
    # mod = sys.modules.get(top_package)
    # modfile = mod.__file__
    # pkg_in_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(modfile)))
    # maincli_path = os.path.join(pkg_in_dir, 'maincli.py')

    if not os.path.exists(maincli_path):
        err_msg = 'This script expects that "maincli.py" be installed to the '\
        'same directory: "{0}"'.format(maincli_path)
        raise ConfigurationException(err_msg)

    return maincli_path

Based on posting by PlasmaBinturong I modified the code.