title: pytest fixtures in a separate directory
body: <p>I'm looking to create a pytest structure where I can separate the fixtures from the tests completely. The reason for this separation is that I want to include the fixtures directory as an external item in subversion and share it between multiple projects. </p>
  
  <p><strong>tree of desired structure</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>project
  |   conftest.py
  |
  +---fixtures
  |       __init__.py
  |       conftest.py
  |       fixture_cifs.py
  |       fixture_ftp.py
  |       fixture_service.py
  |
  \---tests
      |   test_sometest1.py
      |   test_sometest2.py
      |
      \---configurations
              sometest1.conf
              sometest2.conf
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to implement the functionality for each fixture in a separate file in order to avoid a single huge <code>conftest.py</code>. <code>conftest.py</code> would just include wrappers to return an instance of each fixture annotated with <code>@pytest.fixture</code>. There is no problem using a fixture together with a test when the <code>conftest.py</code>, <code>fixture_*.py</code> and <code>test_*.py</code> files are all in the same directory.</p>
  
  <p>However, when the fixtures are separated in a subdirectory I get an error from pytest <code>fixture 'cifs' not found</code>, <code>available fixtures: ...</code>. I haven't found any documentation explaining how to place fixtures outside of <code>test_*.py</code> or the <code>conftest.py</code> adjacent to <code>test_*.py</code>, but nothing to indicate that this shouldn't work either.</p>
  
  <p><strong>How can I place fixtures in their own subdirectory when using pytest?</strong></p>