Resolve Python linting errors for dynamically loaded modules

Consider following project structure that uses nested modules:

$ tree
.
├── a
│   ├── b
│   │   ├── c
│   │   │   └── __init__.py
│   │   └── __init__.py
│   └── __init__.py
└── test.py

3 directories, 4 files

Content of test.py file:

<!-- language: lang-python -->

from a.b.c import foo

print(foo())

Content of a/b/c/__init__.py:

<!-- language: lang-python -->

def foo():
    return "Hello world"

I'd like to omit b when importing things and use from a.c import foo in test.py. This is because I want to organize the code internally in separate subdirectories while allowing files in the root directory to import everything using same base import path. I can achieve that by adding following code to the a/__init__.py:

<!-- language: lang-python -->

import importlib
import sys

importlib.import_module("a.b.c")
sys.modules["a.c"] = sys.modules["a.b.c"]

It works and when I call python test.py having from a.c import foo in it I can see expected Hello world output. However various Python tools and linters hate this. If I try to run pylint on test.py I can see it reporting import errors:

$ pylint test.py
************* Module test
test.py:1:0: C0114: Missing module docstring (missing-module-docstring)
test.py:1:0: E0401: Unable to import 'a.c' (import-error)
test.py:1:0: E0611: No name 'c' in module 'a' (no-name-in-module)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Your code has been rated at 0.00/10 (previous run: 0.00/10, +0.00)

Similarly, if I try to open this in PyCharm it reports errors in the import line:

Cannot find reference 'c' in '__init__.py' 
Unresolved reference 'foo' 

How can I make these tools understand my intent of treating c module as it were inside a directory? I know I can disable various lints placing comments such as # pylint: disable=E0401 in test.py but that's not portable (what if someone uses a different linter in some different IDE...?) and hides the problem instead of resolving it. I'd also hate to copy these into every .py file in the root directory.

Or perhaps it's impossible to achieve and I have just always specify a proper full path...?

Why don't you change __init__.py in a to import all the necessary submodules and make it accessible. You could base your ideas on the following __init__.py placed in a.

import b.c as c

Then you can access the module in test.py as follows:

import a
a.c.foo()

Alternatively, you could create a c.py in a as ivvija suggests.

c.py:

from b.c import *

For this you just need to make sure you aren't redefining __all__ in a/b/c/__init__.py and if you are make sure to add all the needed function like __all__ = ["foo"]