Spyder not handling relative imports - spyder

Question

I am attempting to python3 proof my work and spyder seems to be having an issue with absolute_import.
For demonstration purposes I created two simple files. caller and callme
caller
from __future__ import absolute_import
from .callme import helloWorld
def runme(msg):
helloWorld(msg)
if __name__ == "__main__":
runme('It worked!')
callme
def helloWorld(msg):
print("helloWorld's message is '{}'".format(msg))
if __name__ == "__main__":
helloWorld('Hi')
When attempting to run caller from spyder I get the following error:
ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package
Running from ipython via the anaconda prompt (python 2) or from jupyter notebook (running python3 or python2) both work properly.
Ideas on how to fix spyder's behavior so it properly recognizes absolute_import?
Spyder versions tried:
3.2.4 Python 2.7.14 64bits, Qt 5.6.2, PyQt5 5.6 on Windows 10
3.3.2 Python 2.7.14 64-bit | Qt 5.6.2 | PyQt5 5.6 | Windows 10
Update
Updating spyder via conda update spyder (now version 3.3.2) did not fix the issue.

Answer 1

If you run python caller.py in a system terminal, you'll get exactly the same error as the one you posted, i.e.
ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package
So this is not a problem with Spyder (because Spyder runs something similar to python caller.py when you execute a file with Run > Run), but with the way relative imports works.
Please see this answer for a proper explanation:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/11537218/438386
In essence, you can't use relative imports in scripts.
Note: There's a workaround to avoid this error, as described in this answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/11536794/438386
However, we don't have the ability to execute a script as a package in Spyder, sorry.