how to use/install gps python library

Question

root@raspberrypi:~# python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Jan 13 2013, 11:20:46)
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from gps import gps
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name gps
>>> exit ()

it doesn't seem to work. Installed debian packages: gpsd, gpsd-clients, python-gps, libgps20, libgps-dev

Answer 1

I tried it on an Ubuntu machine and it worked just fine:

$ python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Sep 26 2012, 21:51:14) 
[GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from gps import gps
>>>

First, make sure the file following files are present (save a directory being different due to be different):

/usr/lib/pyshared/python2.7/gps/packet.so
/usr/lib/pyshared/python2.7/gps/clienthelpers.so
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gps-3.6.egg-info
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gps/misc.py
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gps/client.py
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gps/fake.py
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gps/__init__.py
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gps/gps.py

This can be done by running:

dpkg -L python-gps

Also make sure there's no gps.py laying around in the directory you're running python from as that might screw the importer up.

Answer 2

It might be useful to add that even after removing gps.py, I had a file called gps.pyc which was also creating this problem. u remove this file and then problem vanishes..