Pylint
What is Pylint?
Pylint is a static code analyser for Python 2 or 3. The latest version supports Python 3.7.2 and above.
Pylint analyses your code without actually running it. It checks for errors, enforces a
coding standard, looks for code smells, and can make suggestions about how the code
could be refactored. Pylint can infer actual values from your code using its internal
code representation (astroid). If your code is import logging as argparse, Pylint
will know that argparse.error(...) is in fact a logging call and not an argparse call.
Pylint is highly configurable and permits to write plugins in order to add your own checks (for example, for internal libraries or an internal rule). Pylint also has an ecosystem of existing plugins for popular frameworks and third party libraries.
Note
Pylint supports the Python standard library out of the box. Third-party
libraries are not always supported, so a plugin might be needed. A good place
to start is PyPI which often returns a plugin by searching for
pylint <library>. pylint-pydantic, pylint-django and
pylint-sonarjson are examples of such plugins. More information about plugins
and how to load them can be found at :ref:`plugins <plugins>`.
Pylint isn't smarter than you: it may warn you about things that you have
conscientiously done or check for some things that you don't care about.
During adoption, especially in a legacy project where pylint was never enforced,
it's best to start with the --errors-only flag, then disable
convention and refactor message with --disable=C,R and progressively
re-evaluate and re-enable messages as your priorities evolve.
Pylint ships with three additional tools:
- pyreverse (standalone tool that generates package and class diagrams.)
- symilar (duplicate code finder that is also integrated in pylint)
- epylint (Emacs and Flymake compatible Pylint)
Projects that you might want to use alongside pylint include flake8 (faster and simpler checks with very few false positives), mypy, pyright or pyre (typing checks), bandit (security oriented checks), black and isort (auto-formatting), autoflake (automated removal of unused imports or variables), pyupgrade (automated upgrade to newer python syntax) and pydocstringformatter (automated pep257).
Install
For command line use, pylint is installed with:
pip install pylint
It can also be integrated in most editors or IDEs. More information can be found in the documentation.
Contributing
We welcome all forms of contributions such as updates for documentation, new code, checking issues for duplicates or telling us that we can close them, confirming that issues still exist, creating issues because you found a bug or want a feature, etc. Everything is much appreciated!
Please follow the code of conduct and check the Contributor Guides if you want to make a code contribution.
Show your usage
You can place this badge in your README to let others know your project uses pylint.
Learn how to add a badge to your documentation in the the badge documentation.
License
pylint is, with a few exceptions listed below, GPLv2.
The icon files are licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license:
Support
Please check the contact information.
 |
Professional support for pylint is available as part of the Tidelift Subscription. Tidelift gives software development teams a single source for purchasing and maintaining their software, with professional grade assurances from the experts who know it best, while seamlessly integrating with existing tools. |