Flake plugin?

[frejonb]

Nice idea! What are the chances of wrapping it as a flake8 plugin?

[ariebovenberg]

Hi @frejonb! making this a flake8-plugin would be a big win for usability, but it's made tricky because AFAIK flake8-plugins need to work without importing the actual source code.

So to make this into a plugin, I'd have be duplicate all Python's import logic. Which is reasonably complex in normal circumstances, but many libraries define conditional imports, star imports, re-exports and metaclasses.

tricky examples:

try:
    from place import Foo
except ImportError:
    from other_place mport Foo

class Bla(Foo):
    ...

class Qux(Base1 of SOME_FEATURE_FLAG else Base2):
    ...

class Foo(metaclass=Bar):  # a metaclass making slots maybe?
    ...

from somewhere import *  # what now????

For the initial version, I decided to go the import route. I'll keep this issue open because it's definitely worth investigating.

I will also address this in the README. I think many other people have the same question.

[sondrelg]

Just a suggestion, but what about just making it possible to run as a pre-commit hook instead? That would only require a __main__.py I believe, and would tick a lot of the same boxes. I (and I think a pretty large % of devs) run flake8 via pre-commit anyway.

[ariebovenberg]

Awesome! I'm tracking that in #13

[ariebovenberg]

@sondrelg __main__.py has since been implemented in version 0.2.0 which I just published.

[ariebovenberg]

Added 'help wanted' label: if anybody knows a way to trace complex class inheritance statically, let me know.

Otherwise this issue will remain on hold.

[ariebovenberg]

Due to the complexities involved (tracing complex imports, class decorators, metaclasses) I've decided this feature is not feasible.