What should MICROPYPATH be for Unix port?

[strnbrg59]

I built the Unix port (on Ubuntu Linux) and immediately found that without MICROPYTHONHOME defined at all, even "import machine" or "import pyb" fail.
After setting it to $MICROPYTHONHOME/lib/micropython-lib/unix-ffi:$MICROPYTHONHOME/lib/micropython-lib
(where $MICROPYTHONHOME is the base directory where I cloned the repository and did the build)
I can import some modules (pyb, machine...) but they seem devoid of content. ">>> import machine" followed by ">>> dir(machine)" prints simply ['class', 'name', 'dict', 'path']
So where is everything?

On the Micropython running on my Raspberry Pi Pico, I see sys.path is ['', '.frozen', '/lib'] and yet everything works great.

I ran the tests ("make tests") and all the ones that ran succeeded. I see lots of example code too (for example examples/network/http_server.py) but they all start having assumed you've already successfully imported modules (like network) that I am so far unable to import.

[dlech]

The unix port doesn't have machine or pyb modules since it generic and doesn't target any specific OS or hardware.

[strnbrg59]

OK, makes sense. I'll have to write some stubs then; the idea is to test (to the extent possible) on Linux.
Nonetheless, if I want to benefit as much as possible from the libraries that do exist (i.e. write no more stubs than I absolutely have to), what should my MICROPYPATH be?

[dlech]

You should not have to set it to anything unless you want to import files not in the default sys.path, i.e. set it to the path of your stubs/mocks if you want to share those between multiple projects.

[jimmo]

@strnbrg59 MICROPYPATH defaults to ".frozen:~/.micropython/lib:/usr/lib/micropython" which corresponds to:

>>> sys.path
['', '.frozen', '/home/jimmo/.micropython/lib', '/usr/lib/micropython']

This is a sensible default which gives you the expected behavior of finding modules in the current directory, ability to load frozen modules (e.g. uasyncio, mip), and library packages (e.g. installed by micropython -m mip install <foo>).