A code linter is a program that performs static analysis of your source code for potential errors. The kinds of errors a linter can detect include:
- syntax errors
- structural problems like the use of undefined variables
- best practices or code style guideline violations
A linter could help you develop faster, keep your code organized, and do less syntax mistakes that potentially could cause errors and break your code.
Ideally, linting should be a part of our workflow. Before committing the code, linters should inspect the code and raise errors in case of any discrepancies.
Python has several good options for code linters. Following two are mostly used for linting:
It's fast and has a low rate of false positives. Flake8 is actually a combination of several other tools, mainly the Pyflakes static analysis tool and the Pycodestyle (former pep8) code style checker.
Checkout this documentation to integrate Flake8 with git hooks https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/user/using-hooks.html
Pylint is another good choice. It takes a little more effort to set up than Flake8 and also triggers more false positives. On the other hand, it provides a more comprehensive analysis.
To integrate pylint with github flow, please refer to this link
https://git-pylint-commit-hook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html
ESlint helps a team to follow unified rules increasing readability and purity of code. ESlint is highly flexible and allows customizing rules for errors, best practices, variable declarations, ES6 etc.
ESlint works with a set of rules that you define. The most commonly used linting rules are Airbnb, which bills itself as "a mostly reasonable approach to JavaScript." And their linting rules are popular because they are simple, sensible, and beautifully consistent.
A good guide to integrate ESlint as part of your workflow is:
https://medium.com/quick-code/how-to-integrate-eslint-prettier-in-react-6efbd206d5c4