CMake - Check if Pylint is installed

Question

I'm using Cmake to go through all the .py files inside a directory and detect errors and check coding standards using Pylint.

Is there a way for me to check if Pylint is installed using cmake? Would this code be OS independent (for example for Ubuntu and Windows)?

Answer 1

You should create a FindPylint.cmake file and include() its directory. Then run find_package(Pylint REQUIRED).

FindPylint.cmake:

execute_process(
    COMMAND pylint --version
    OUTPUT_VARIABLE pylint_out
    RESULT_VARIABLE pylint_error
    ERROR_VARIABLE pylint_suppress)

if (NOT pylint_error)
    string(REGEX MATCH "pylint .\..\.." pylint_version_string "${pylint_out}")
    string(SUBSTRING "${pylint_version_string}" 7 5 pylint_version)
endif ()

if (pylint_version)
    set(PYLINT_FOUND 1
        CACHE INTERNAL "Pylint version ${pylint_version} found")
endif ()

include(FindPackageHandleStandardArgs)
find_package_handle_standard_args(Pylint REQUIRED_VARS pylint_version
                                    VERSION_VAR pylint_version)

Some explanation:

• The error output is not actually an error, it reads No config file found, using default configuration, so we suppress it by ignoring the pylint_suppress variable.
• the pylint output has more than just the version, so we need to do some regex/string handling.
• the CACHE INTERNAL variable is not strictly necessary, but could come in handy later to check if Pylint was found.