Thanks for the detailed answer @Louis_Frolio ,

Unfortunately, none of this is working, I have a notebook in my repo root, I checked all the sys.path, the cwd and, did all the options you mentioned and still it doesn't work in dbr 17.2+. 

Simply put I see all the folders there in listdir, but somehow it doesn't pick up any packages.

Do you not experience the same with local packages?

Cheers,

Max