Inside your project

git clone this_repo your_dir_name

somewhere inside your package tree. Assuming you have chosen "dev" as your_dir_name you should create this way a package with no modules.

It's called scriptlike because it behaves a lot like calling shell (bash, etc.) scripts from other scripts. You can even do something like:

$ rm -f ./my_script                 # then...             
$ sleep 300 && ./my_script args &   # you have 5 minutes to make `my_script` be an executable!

Create a python file inside "dev", for example functions.py:

import random

def foo(x,y):
    print(x)
    print(y)
    return 13

def bar(x):
    z = foo(x,6)
    print("Boo!")
    print(z*2)
    return z*2

From sibling modules do either one of

from .dev import *
from . import dev

# unfortunately this doesn't work as `functions` only imitates a module
from .dev import functions

to obtain access to dev.functions object, that allows access to every callable and not callable member of the real module, except:

• every callable reloads whole functions module right before every call
• not callable items pass through to the latest version of the namespace
• every callable that was available before reload and now is not, is removed
• new names are made available right after any call to callable
• callable that resolves to nothing after reload will act like calling None

like this:

from .dev import *
handler = functions.foo

handler(1,2)            # prints 1 2 13
functions.bar(3)        # prints 3 6 13 26

# .. change functions.py: 13 to 20, z*2 to z%10, name `bar` to `baz` and save file

functions.bar(3)        ##  Exception: NoneType is not callable  (but it reloaded so...)
functions.bar(3)        ##  Exception: AttributeError `functions` has no attribute `bar`
handler(1,2)            # prints 1 2 20
functions.baz(3)        # prints 3 6 20 0

Now if you have a service that's costly to bring up and tear down, but you want to develop on a function tweaking level, you can make the project call this directory's definitions, and as long as it doesn't crash, you can repeat the process without restarting everything.

At the end of the day, the definitions can be copied verbatim to their proper place.