The essential problem with Python namespace packages is that they require
overlapping __init__.py files, which are shared by different projects.
The most straightforward way to handle namespace packages in conda is
to create a package which defines the namespace , which only contains a
single empty __init__.py file, and then make the other packages depend
on this.
This is how we handle namespace packages in the Anaconda distribution.
For example, the
backports recipe defines the backports namespace, and then other
packages, such as
configparser depend on backports.
There are other ways to get around this problem, e.g. by preserving the egg directory which setuptools creates, but that is not as simple and clean (from a packaging perspective), and brings along other challenges.