pytype 2024.10.11
Python type inferencer
License: Apache 2.0
Requires Python: >=3.10


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# pytype - 🦆✔

Pytype checks and infers types for your Python code - without requiring type
annotations. Pytype can:

* Lint plain Python code, flagging common mistakes such as misspelled attribute
names, incorrect function calls, and [much more][error-classes], even across
file boundaries.
* Enforce user-provided [type annotations][pep-484]. While annotations are
optional for pytype, it will check and apply them where present.
* Generate type annotations in standalone files ("[pyi files][pyi-stub-files]"),
which can be merged back into the Python source with a provided
[merge-pyi][merge-pyi] tool.

Pytype is a static analyzer; it does not execute the code it runs on.

Thousands of projects at Google rely on pytype to keep their Python code
well-typed and error-free.

For more information, check out the [user guide][user-guide], [FAQ][faq], or
[supported features][supported-features].

## How is pytype different from other type checkers?

1. Pytype uses **inference** instead of gradual typing. This means it will
infer types on code even when the code has no type hints on it. So it can
detect issues with code like this, which other type checkers would miss:

    ```python
    def f():
        return "PyCon"
    def g():
        return f() + 2019

    # pytype: line 4, in g: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'str'
    # and 'int' [unsupported-operands]
    ```

1. Pytype is **lenient** instead of strict. That means it allows all
operations that succeed at runtime and don't contradict annotations. For
instance, this code will pass as safe in pytype, but fail in other type
checkers, which assign types to variables as soon as they are initialized:

    ```python
    from typing import List
    def get_list() -> List[str]:
        lst = ["PyCon"]
        lst.append(2019)
        return [str(x) for x in lst]

    # mypy: line 4: error: Argument 1 to "append" of "list" has
    # incompatible type "int"; expected "str"
    ```

Also see the corresponding [FAQ entry][faq-diff].

## Quickstart

To quickly get started with type-checking a file or directory, run the
following, replacing `file_or_directory` with your input:

```shell
pip install pytype
pytype file_or_directory
```

To set up pytype on an entire package, add the following to a `pyproject.toml`
file in the directory immediately above the package, replacing `package_name`
with the package name:

```toml
[tool.pytype]
inputs = ['package_name']
```

Now you can run the no-argument command `pytype` to type-check the package. It's
also easy to add pytype to your automated testing; see this
[example][importlab-github-actions] of a GitHub project that runs pytype on GitHub Actions.

Finally, pytype generates files of inferred type information, located by default
in `.pytype/pyi`. You can use this information to type-annotate the
corresponding source file:

```shell
merge-pyi -i <filepath>.py .pytype/pyi/<filename>.pyi
```

## Requirements

You need a Python 3.8-3.12 interpreter to run pytype, as well as an
interpreter in `$PATH` for the Python version of the code you're analyzing
(supported: 3.8-3.12).

Platform support:

* Pytype is currently developed and tested on Linux\*, which is the main supported
  platform.
* Installation on MacOSX requires OSX 10.7 or higher and Xcode v8 or higher**.
* Windows is currently not supported unless you use [WSL][wsl].

<sub>\*
On Alpine Linux, installation may fail due to issues with upstream
dependencies.  See the details of [this issue][scikit-build-issue] for a
possible fix.
<br />
\*\*
If the ninja dependency fails to install, make sure cmake is installed. See
[this issue][ninja-build-issue] for details.
</sub>

## Installing

Pytype can be installed via pip. Note that the installation requires `wheel`
and `setuptools`. (If you're working in a virtualenv, these two packages should
already be present.)

```shell
pip install pytype
```

Or from the source code [on GitHub][github].

```shell
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/google/pytype.git
cd pytype
pip install .
```

Instead of using `--recurse-submodules`, you could also have run

```shell
git submodule init
git submodule update
```

in the `pytype` directory. To edit the code and have your edits tracked live,
replace the pip install command with:

```shell
pip install -e .
```

### Installing on WSL

Follow the steps above, but make sure you have the correct libraries first:

```shell
sudo apt install build-essential python3-dev libpython3-dev
```

## Usage

```
usage: pytype [options] input [input ...]

positional arguments:
  input                 file or directory to process
```

Common options:

* `-V, --python-version`: Python version (major.minor) of the target code.
  Defaults to the version that pytype is running under.
* `-o, --output`: The directory into which all pytype output goes, including
  generated .pyi files. Defaults to `.pytype`.
* `-d, --disable`. Comma or space-separated list of error names to ignore.
  Detailed explanations of pytype's error names are in
  [this doc][error-classes]. Defaults to empty.

For a full list of options, run `pytype --help`.

In addition to the above, you can direct pytype to use a custom typeshed
installation instead of its own bundled copy by setting `$TYPESHED_HOME`.

### Config File

For convenience, you can save your pytype configuration in a file. The config
file can be a TOML-style file with a `[tool.pytype]` section (preferred) or an
INI-style file with a `[pytype]` section. If an explicit config file is not
supplied, pytype will look for a pytype section in the first `pyproject.toml` or
`setup.cfg` file found by walking upwards from the current working directory.

Start off by generating a sample config file:

```shell
$ pytype --generate-config pytype.toml
```

Now customize the file based on your local setup, keeping only the sections you
need. Directories may be relative to the location of the config file, which is
useful if you want to check in the config file as part of your project.

For example, suppose you have the following directory structure and want to
analyze package `~/repo1/foo`, which depends on package `~/repo2/bar`:

```
~/
├── repo1
│   └── foo
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── file_to_check.py
└── repo2
    └── bar
        ├── __init__.py
        └── dependency.py
```

Here is the filled-in config file, which instructs pytype to type-check
`~/repo1/foo` as Python 3.9 code, look for packages in `~/repo1` and `~/repo2`,
and ignore attribute errors. Notice that the path to a package does not include
the package itself.

```toml
$ cat ~/repo1/pytype.toml

# NOTE: All relative paths are relative to the location of this file.

[tool.pytype]

# Space-separated list of files or directories to process.
inputs = [
    'foo',
]

# Python version (major.minor) of the target code.
python_version = '3.9'

# Paths to source code directories, separated by ':'.
pythonpath = .:~/repo2

# Space-separated list of error names to ignore.
disable = [
    'attribute-error',
]
```

We could've discovered that `~/repo2` needed to be added to the pythonpath by
running pytype's broken dependency checker:

```
$ pytype --config=~/repo1/pytype.toml ~/repo1/foo/*.py --unresolved

Unresolved dependencies:
  bar.dependency
```

### Subtools

Pytype ships with a few scripts in addition to `pytype` itself:

* `annotate-ast`, an in-progress type annotator for ASTs.
* [`merge-pyi`][merge-pyi], for merging type information from a .pyi file into a
Python file.
* `pytd-tool`, a parser for .pyi files.
* `pytype-single`, a debugging tool for pytype developers, which analyzes a
single Python file assuming that .pyi files have already been generated for all
of its dependencies.
* `pyxref`, a cross-references generator.

## License

[Apache 2.0][license]

## Disclaimer

This is not an official Google product.

[error-classes]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/errors.md
[faq]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/faq.md
[faq-diff]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/faq.md#how-is-pytype-different-from-other-type-checkers
[github]: https://github.com/google/pytype/
[importlab-github-actions]: https://github.com/google/importlab/blob/main/.github/workflows/ci.yml
[license]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/LICENSE
[merge-pyi]: https://github.com/google/pytype/tree/main/pytype/tools/merge_pyi
[ninja-build-issue]: https://github.com/google/pytype/issues/957
[pep-484]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484
[pyi-stub-files]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/user_guide.md#pyi-stub-files
[scikit-build-issue]: https://github.com/scikit-build/ninja-python-distributions/issues/27
[supported-features]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/support.md
[user-guide]: https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/main/docs/user_guide.md
[wsl]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq