python: pycodestyle (ex pep8) vs pylint strictness

Question

I have a python project that I want to check against PEP8 conformance.

My setyp.cfg is the following:

[pycodestyle]
count = True
ignore = E266, W504
max-line-length = 80
statistics = True
exclude = .venv,./build%

After some cleaning up, my pycodestyle check is now yileding no errors nor warnings (the ones ignored aside of course)

~/Workspace/my-app  master ✔                                                                                                                        2h36m
➢  pycodestyle .
(.venv)
~/Workspace/my-app  master ✔

However, running pylint against my project yields a ton of errors:

(some of them follow just for demonstration purposes)

************* Module somemodule.commands
src/somemodule/commands.py:98:0: C0330: Wrong continued indentation (add 16 spaces).
                            format(gcp_project)))
                            ^               | (bad-continuation)
src/somemodule/commands.py:1:0: C0111: Missing module docstring (missing-docstring)
src/somemodule/commands.py:21:-1: W0105: String statement has no effect (pointless-string-statement)
src/somemodule/commands.py:29:4: C0103: Variable name "p" doesn't conform to snake_case naming style (invalid-name)
src/somemodule/commands.py:45:4: C0103: Variable name "p" doesn't conform to snake_case naming style (invalid-name)
src/somemodule/commands.py:41:16: W0613: Unused argument 'g_project' (unused-argument)
src/somemodule/commands.py:58:0: C0111: Missing function docstring (missing-docstring)
src/somemodule/commands.py:59:4: C0103: Variable name "p" doesn't conform to snake_case naming style (invalid-name)
src/somemodule/commands.py:100:4: R1705: Unnecessary "else" after "return" (no-else-return)
src/somemodule/commands.py:102:8: C0103: Variable name "p2" doesn't conform to snake_case naming style (invalid-name)
src/somemodule/commands.py:123:4: C0103: Variable name "p" doesn't conform to snake_case naming style (invalid-name)
src/somemodule/commands.py:139:0: C0111: Missing function docstring (missing-docstring)
src/somemodule/commands.py:2:0: C0411: standard import "import os" should be placed before "import click" (wrong-import-order)
src/somemodule/commands.py:3:0: C0411: standard import "import sys" should be placed before "import click" (wrong-import-order)
src/somemodule/commands.py:5:0: C0411: standard import "from subprocess import Popen, PIPE" should be placed before "import click" (wrong-import-order)

How can it be that these 2 tools yield so deviating results?

Answer 1

I just stumbled over this question comparing pycodestyle and pylint myself.

In short the answer is that pycodestyle is "a subset" of pylint. Let me quote a little something from essential python tools:

• Pycodestyle (Formerly PEP8) is the official linter tool to check the python code against the style conventions of PEP8 python.
• Pylint is a python linter which checks the source code and also acts as a bug and quality checker. It has more verification checks and options than just PEP8(Python style guide).
  • This is the most commonly used tool for linting in python.
  • It includes the following features:
    • Checking the length of each line
    • Checking if variable names are well-formed according to the project’s coding standard
    • Checking if declared interfaces are truly implemented.
    • ...