Pylint: "Problem importing module ....: cannot import name 'Type'"

Question

Every run of pylint (no matter what program is checked) produces the following error message:

(env) $ pylint hello.py 
Problem importing module logging.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module spelling.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module python3.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module typecheck.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module variables.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module refactoring.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module format.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module imports.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module utils.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module newstyle.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module exceptions.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module classes.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module stdlib.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module async.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module design_analysis.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module base.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Problem importing module strings.py: cannot import name 'Type'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/bin/pylint", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(run_pylint())
  File "/Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pylint/__init__.py", line 20, in run_pylint
    Run(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pylint/lint.py", line 1557, in __init__
    linter.enable("c-extension-no-member")
  File "/Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pylint/utils.py", line 323, in enable
    msgid, enable=True, scope=scope, line=line, ignore_unknown=ignore_unknown
  File "/Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pylint/utils.py", line 366, in _set_msg_status
    msg = self.msgs_store.get_message_definition(msgid)
  File "/Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pylint/utils.py", line 989, in get_message_definition
    msgid_or_symbol=msgid_or_symbol
pylint.exceptions.UnknownMessageError: No such message id c-extension-no-member

In this particular case, I was checking the following trivial program hello.py:

print("Hello")

But the problem also occurs when I don't check a program, e.g. pylint --version

Pylint is running in a virtual environment which I created as follows:

$ python3 -m virtualenv env
Using base prefix '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5'
New python executable in /Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/bin/python3
Also creating executable in /Users/brunorijsman/python-logging-performance/env/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...done.
$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $

(Note: I realize that module venv is recommended over virtualenv these days, but I have different problems with venv on macOS as described in 'pip install' fails for every package ("Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement"))

I installed pylint into the virtual environment as follows:

(env) $ pip install pylint
Collecting pylint
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/a5/06/ecef826f319055e6b231716730d7f9047dd7524ffda224b521d989f085b6/pylint-2.2.2-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting isort>=4.2.5 (from pylint)
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/1f/2c/22eee714d7199ae0464beda6ad5fedec8fee6a2f7ffd1e8f1840928fe318/isort-4.3.4-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting astroid>=2.0.0 (from pylint)
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/fc/53/8809bc008bad0300897281a7b320b286dc0e84e836396c0cff6279841e8a/astroid-2.1.0-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting mccabe (from pylint)
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/87/89/479dc97e18549e21354893e4ee4ef36db1d237534982482c3681ee6e7b57/mccabe-0.6.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting typed-ast; python_version < "3.7" and implementation_name == "cpython" (from astroid>=2.0.0->pylint)
Collecting wrapt (from astroid>=2.0.0->pylint)
Collecting six (from astroid>=2.0.0->pylint)
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/67/4b/141a581104b1f6397bfa78ac9d43d8ad29a7ca43ea90a2d863fe3056e86a/six-1.11.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting lazy-object-proxy (from astroid>=2.0.0->pylint)
Installing collected packages: isort, typed-ast, wrapt, six, lazy-object-proxy, astroid, mccabe, pylint
Successfully installed astroid-2.1.0 isort-4.3.4 lazy-object-proxy-1.3.1 mccabe-0.6.1 pylint-2.2.2 six-1.11.0 typed-ast-1.1.0 wrapt-1.10.11

Version info:

Operating system is macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

(env) $ python --version
Python 3.5.1

Answer 1

It seems that your python version compatible with specific pylint and astroid. Python 3.5 comes with its own version of typing, which was added before the introduction of typing.Type. So, this might solve the problem :

pip install astroid==1.5.3 pylint==1.8.2

This problem happened with python 3.5

https://github.com/PyCQA/pylint/issues/1216

https://github.com/python/mypy/issues/1838