Mailman 3 April 2014 - code-quality

Alerting to unused module globals, instance attributes, etc?
by Skip Montanaro April 23, 2014

April 23, 2014

If I write a standalong script/program, it looks just like a module to the outside world (as long as I name it correctly), though it might have a #! line at the top. Otherwise, to a static analyzer, it still looks like a module, which means anything it defines might be visible from the outside. Consequently, if I happen not to use module globals or instance attributes, tools like pylint won't complain. I think it would be nice if I could tell such tools either: 1. The thing I'm feeding you is a standalone program. Nobody else might reference this stuff, so complain about unused names. 2. This particular thing I'm defining is either public or private. So, if I have this block of "constants": ONE_SECOND = 1000 # ms ONE_MINUTE = 60 * ONE_SECOND ONE_HOUR = 60 * ONE_MINUTE ONE_SECOND_DELTA = datetime.timedelta(seconds=1) ONE_MINUTE_DELTA = datetime.timedelta(minutes=1) ONE_DAY_DELTA = datetime.timedelta(days=1) ONE_YEAR_DELTA = 365 * ONE_DAY_DELTA EPSILON = 1e-10 it would be nice if I was told if any were unused. Similarly, if an attribute of a class is defined but not used elsewhere within the class (or perhaps within the defining module), I'd like to know if it's unused. At a minimum, if I've defined an instance method with a leading underscore in its name, it would be real nice if I was told about lack of use within the class. For classes where most of the API is public, it might be nice to mark the class as public then explicitly mark any private attributes: # <marker> public class Point: def __init__(self): self.x = self.y = 0.0 # <marker> private self.r = self.theta = 0.0 # <marker> private def convert_to_polar(self): self.r = math.sqrt(self.x**2 + self.y**2) self.theta = math.atan2(self.y, self.x) Do any existing static analysis tools support anything like this? I'm certainly not married to the notion of annotating attributes. Also, I should note that I am still using Python 2.7. If there are any features of Python 3 that facilitate this, I'd love to hear about it. Thx, Skip

2 2

[ANN] Pylint 1.2 released
by Sylvain Thénault April 22, 2014

April 22, 2014

Hi there, Pylint 1.2 has been uploaded to pypi by the end of the last week! More info on this heavy release on http://www.logilab.org/blogentry/240019. As usual, feedback and comments welcome. Enjoy! -- Sylvain Thénault, LOGILAB, Paris (01.45.32.03.12) - Toulouse (05.62.17.16.42) Formations Python, Debian, Méth. Agiles: http://www.logilab.fr/formations Développement logiciel sur mesure: http://www.logilab.fr/services CubicWeb, the semantic web framework: http://www.cubicweb.org

1 0

Is the pep8-naming project moribund?
by Keith Derrick April 17, 2014

April 17, 2014

There are numerous issues open, and at least one pull-request (mine). there has been no activity by the owner for at least a year. Right now the official pypi version (2.2.1) is broken for Python 3.4. My PR (https://github.com/flintwork/pep8-naming/pull/11) is working well for me in my own fork, but I'm working up a library of my own and don't want to use my fork as an installation requirement when I finally publish to pypi. How do we re-invigorate the project? And, out of curiosity, if the owner of a published package has 'gone away' (i.e. abandoned the project), how does someone else take it over? Forking is easy enough, but you would eventually need to publish the new version on pypi. Is that protected (so that people can't hijack a trusted package like paramiko or pycrypto, for example)? It could be always be published with a different package name, but then existing users don't get the bug-fix automatically. Keith

2 2

Warning from pylint about its own code?
by Skip Montanaro April 1, 2014

April 1, 2014

Lately, whenever I run pylint, I get this warning: /opt/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pylint/reporters/text.py:79: UserWarning: parseable output format is deprecated. This is equivalent to --msg-template={path}:{line}: [{msg_id}({symbol}), {obj}] {msg} 'to --msg-template=%s' % (self.name, self.line_format)) Thinking my 1.0.0 install was just out-of-date, I just updated to 1.1.0, but I continue to get this warning. Here are my details (note the message appears there as well): % pylint --version /opt/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pylint/reporters/text.py:79: UserWarning: parseable output format is deprecated. This is equivalent to --msg-template={path}:{line}: [{msg_id}({symbol}), {obj}] {msg} 'to --msg-template=%s' % (self.name, self.line_format)) pylint 1.1.0, astroid 1.0.0, common 0.60.0 Python 2.7.2 (default, Nov 14 2012, 05:07:35) [GCC 4.4.6 [TWW]] Is this something I'm doing wrong? I didn't find ParseableTextReporter mentioned anywhere except for the class definition. My ~/.pylintrc and ~/.pylint.d files/directories are similarly devoid of references. Clues appreciated. Thx, Skip

1 1