Metrics – tools for static analysis

Static code analysis tools can provide a rich summary of information on the static properties of your code, which can provide insights into aspects like complexity and modifiability/readability of the code.

Python has a lot of third-party tool support, which helps in measuring the static aspects of Python code such as these:

• Conformance to coding standards like PEP-8

• Code complexity metrics like the McCabe metric

• Errors in code such as syntax errors, indentation issues, missing imports, variable overwrites, and others

• Logic issues in code

• Code smells

The following are some of the most popular tools in the Python ecosystem which can perform such static analysis:

• Pylint: Pylint is a static checker for Python code, which can detect a range of coding errors, code smells, and style errors. Pylint uses a style close to PEP-8. The newer versions of Pylint also provide statistics about code complexity, and can print reports. Pylint requires the code to be executed before...