Writing Plugins For Flake8 2 and 3

Plugins have existed for Flake8 2.x for a few years. There are a number of these on PyPI already. While it did not seem reasonable for Flake8 to attempt to provide a backwards compatible shim for them, we did decide to try to document the easiest way to write a plugin that’s compatible across both versions.

Note

If your plugin does not register options, it should Just Work.

The only breaking change in Flake8 3.0 is the fact that we no longer check the option parser for a list of strings to parse from a config file. On Flake8 2.x, to have an option parsed from the configuration files that Flake8 finds and parses you would have to do something like:

parser.add_option('-X', '--example-flag', type='string',
                  help='...')
parser.config_options.append('example-flag')

For Flake8 3.0, we have added three arguments to the add_option() method you will call on the parser you receive:

• parse_from_config which expects True or False

  When True, Flake8 will parse the option from the config files Flake8 finds.

• comma_separated_list which expects True or False

  When True, Flake8 will split the string intelligently and handle extra whitespace. The parsed value will be a list.

• normalize_paths which expects True or False

  When True, Flake8 will:

  • remove trailing path separators (i.e., os.path.sep)
  • return the absolute path for values that have the separator in them

All three of these options can be combined or used separately.

Parsing Options from Configuration Files

The example from Flake8 2.x now looks like:

parser.add_option('-X', '--example-flag', type='string',
                  parse_from_config=True,
                  help='...')

Parsing Comma-Separated Lists

Now let’s imagine that the option we want to add is expecting a comma-separatd list of values from the user (e.g., --select E123,W503,F405). Flake8 2.x often forced users to parse these lists themselves since pep8 special-cased certain flags and left others on their own. Flake8 3.0 adds comma_separated_list so that the parsed option is already a list for plugin authors. When combined with parse_from_config this means that users can also do something like:

example-flag =
    first,
    second,
    third,
    fourth,
    fifth

And Flake8 will just return the list:

["first", "second", "third", "fourth", "fifth"]

Normalizing Values that Are Paths

Finally, let’s imagine that our new option wants a path or list of paths. To ensure that these paths are semi-normalized (the way Flake8 2.x used to work) we need only pass normalize_paths=True. If you have specified comma_separated_list=True then this will parse the value as a list of paths that have been normalized. Otherwise, this will parse the value as a single path.

Option Handling on Flake8 2 and 3

So, in conclusion, we can now write our plugin that relies on registering options with Flake8 and have it work on Flake8 2.x and 3.x.

option_args = ('-X', '--example-flag')
option_kwargs = {
    'type': 'string',
    'parse_from_config': True,
    'help': '...',
}
try:
    # Flake8 3.x registration
    parser.add_option(*option_args, **option_kwargs)
except TypeError:
    # Flake8 2.x registration
    parse_from_config = option_kwargs.pop('parse_from_config', False)
    parser.add_option(*option_args, **option_kwargs)
    if parse_from_config:
        parser.config_options.append(option_args[-1].lstrip('-'))

Or, you can write a tiny helper function:

def register_opt(parser, *args, **kwargs):
    try:
        # Flake8 3.x registration
        parser.add_option(*args, **kwargs)
    except TypeError:
        # Flake8 2.x registration
        parse_from_config = kwargs.pop('parse_from_config', False)
        parser.add_option(*args, **kwargs)
        if parse_from_config:
            parser.config_options.append(args[-1].lstrip('-'))

@classmethod
def register_options(cls, parser):
    register_opt(parser, '-X', '--example-flag', type='string',
                 parse_from_config=True, help='...')

The transition period is admittedly not fantastic, but we believe that this is a worthwhile change for plugin developers going forward. We also hope to help with the transition phase for as many plugins as we can manage.