imp module deprecated

[BenBradnick]

The imp module is deprecated and needs replacing with importlib:

DeprecationWarning: the imp module is deprecated in favour of importlib;
see the module's documentation for alternative uses
    import imp

This is a bit more involved than just a straight replacement. This may help: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67631/how-to-import-a-module-given-the-full-path

[BenBradnick]

I've had a play around with using importlib as a replacement but I can't quite get it working:

def import_package_from_path(name, path):
    print(f"Importing package {name} at path: {path}")
    dirname, basename = os.path.abspath(path).rsplit(os.sep, 1)
    print(f"Base name: {basename}, dirname: {dirname}")
    # spec = importlib.util.find_spec(basename, package=path)
    spec = importlib.util.find_spec(basename, package=dirname)
    if spec is None:
        spec = importlib.util.spec_from_file_location(basename, path)
    print(f"Spec: {spec}")
    mod = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec)
    spec.loader.exec_module(mod)
    print(f"{dir(mod)}")

In the defines unit test, no spec is found and so the module from spec fails.

When testing with the simulator, the spec is found and the exec_module succeeds, but:

1. the module doesn't have the same attributes as the module instance returned from imp.load_module
2. it looks like when using imp.load_module an alias is used based on the name defined in the YAML, whereas when using importlib I have to give the package name (i.e. name of the directory where the module(s) are located) and I don't see how to substitute it