LiveImport

LiveImport reliably and automatically reloads Python modules in Jupyter notebooks. LiveImport reloads are well-defined, deterministic operations that follow the semantics of a developer’s import statements exactly. It maintains consistency between modules by automatically reloading dependent modules as needed, ensuring up-to-date references across a notebook and its modules.

LiveImport is designed for developers who interactively build Jupyter notebooks together with external Python code, and who want predictable reloading with minimal mystery.

Given a cell like

%%liveimport
from common import *
from nets import ConvNet, ResidualNet as ResNet
import hyperparam as hp

LiveImport will execute the import statements, then automatically reload common, nets, or hyperparam whenever their source files change. When LiveImport reloads, it will rebind names in the notebook as described by the import statements. If nets imports from hyperparam, then when hyperparam is modified, LiveImport will automatically reload nets after hyperparam.

To make the cell above transparent to IDEs like Visual Studio Code, you can hide the cell magic:

#_%%liveimport
from common import *
from nets import ConvNet, ResidualNet as ResNet
import hyperparam as hp

Hidden cell magic is a user experience feature tailored for modern notebook development. Others include tracking indirectly imported modules, protection against reloading in the middle of multi-cell runs, and optional reload notification.

The User Guide describes how to use LiveImport in notebooks, and the API Reference provides more details. If you currently use autoreload, you might consider the Comparison with Autoreload.

See Installation to get started.