edx-lint

A collection of code quality tools:

• A few pylint plugins to check for quality issues pylint misses.
• A command-line tool to generate config files like pylintrc from a master file (part of edx_lint), and a repo-specific tweaks file.

Using edx_lint

The edx_lint command can generate config files from its own master file. Install the package using pip:

$ pip install edx-lint

The write sub-command will write a config file based on the contents of the edx_lint master file:

$ edx_lint write pylintrc

The file written contains a hash of its contents, to detect subsequent editing. edx_lint will detect this when it next tries to write the file. If editing is detected, the edited file will be moved aside so it can be compared to the newly written file.

Handling newly introduced lint violations

New potential lint violations will be communicated with a major version bump.

If you run into new lint violations during an upgrade of edx-lint, your options include:

1. Fixing the violations immediately, or
2. Using lint-amnesty and fixing at a later time, or
3. Customizing edx_lint to permanently ignore the violations.

Using lint-amnesty

The lint-amnesty command can be used to squash all existing pylint errors in a codebase, so that from then the repository can maintain pylint-cleanliness. Install the package using pip:

$ pip install edx-lint

The lint-amnesty command expects pylint errors in the --output-format=parseable format:

$ pylint my.python.package --output-format=parseable | lint-amnesty

This will add comments for every existing pylint violation that look like:

# pylint: disable=some-error  # lint-amnesty

It will also remove any existing suppressions that pylint flags as being useless-suppressions.

Customizing edx_lint

You can customize the resulting pylintrc file by creating a pylintrc_tweaks file in the current directory before running the write sub-command. It should contain only the settings you want to override.

Note: If your project is not a Django project, you'll want to disable the Django plugins with your pylintrc_tweaks file:

[MASTER]
load-plugins = edx_lint.pylint

Developing edx_lint

To run the tests:

$ make requirements
$ make test

To manually test your pylint plugin, create a custom module and run pylint with a selected set of enabled message symbols. For instance:

pylint --load-plugins=edx_lint.pylint --disable=all --enable=feature-toggle-needs-doc path/to/my/custom/module.py

License

The code in this repository is licensed under Apache 2.0. Please see LICENSE.txt for details.

How To Contribute

Contributions are very welcome.

Please read How To Contribute for details.

Getting Help

The Open edX project has resources for developer support on the Getting Help page.