pycodestyle vs pylint: What are the differences?

Overview

This Markdown code provides a comparison between pycodestyle and pylint - two popular Python linters. It highlights key differences between these tools, which can be used in a website.

1. Configuration and Extensibility: Pycodestyle focuses on enforcing the PEP 8 style guide and has a limited set of options. On the other hand, pylint offers extensive configuration options and is highly extensible with the ability to customize its checks and messages.

2. Code Analysis: Pycodestyle mainly focuses on code styling and formatting, flagging issues such as indentation, line length, and whitespace. Pylint, on the other hand, not only checks for style violations but also performs static code analysis to identify potential bugs, code smells, and maintainability issues.

3. Type Checking: Pylint includes built-in support for type checking using Python type hints. It can report type-related issues such as incompatible assignments or function signatures. Pycodestyle, being a style guide checker, does not provide this functionality.

4. Integration with Editors and IDEs: Pylint offers better integration with various code editors and IDEs, providing real-time feedback and suggestions while writing code. Pycodestyle, being a command-line tool, lacks this feature.

5. Code Metrics and Complexity Analysis: Pylint provides various metrics and complexity analysis, such as cyclomatic complexity and code duplication detection. Pycodestyle does not offer these features.

6. Community and Documentation: Pylint has a larger community and more extensive documentation compared to pycodestyle, making it easier for users to find help and resources.

In summary, pycodestyle is focused solely on enforcing PEP 8 style guide conventions, while pylint provides a broader range of features, including style enforcement, code analysis, type checking, integration with editors, and complex metrics.