Descriptive flake8 errors in PyCharm

Question

PyCharm does not have a built-in support for flake8 at the moment. But, flake8 can be configured to run as an external tool.

Sometimes, especia

Answer 1

It is definitely possible.

One approach would be to adjust the flake8 output using the --format command-line option to specify http(s) links to the Flake8Rules catalog:

--format='%(path)s:%(row)d,%(col)d:%(code)s:%(text)s:https://lintlyci.github.io/Flake8Rules/rules/%(code)s.html'

The problem then is for the console or PyCharm output window to render the links properly.

Fortunately, we can do that using the plugins - "Awesome Console" for the terminal and "Console Link" for the output window.

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##Step-by-step Instructions

1. make sure to have flake8 installed in the current Python environment
2. install "Awesome Console" plugin:

• go to PyCharm Preferences -> Plugins -> Browser Repositories...
• find "Awesome Console" and install (PyCharm restart required):

3. configure "flake8" as an External Tool:

• go to PyCharm Preferences -> Tools -> External Tools -> "+"
• configure the path to flake8 as well as $FilePath$ placeholder for the desired directory/path to be processed:

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##Demo

Now, let's say we have created this test.py file with a few violations:

def f(a = 10):
  return a*10

If we right-click on a test.py file, select External Tools -> flake8, this is the output we are going to get (note the clickable links for every warning):

Now, whenever in doubt, we can follow the link for additional details about a warning.

This is just one way to do it, would be happy to hear if there is an easier or better way to combine these tools and projects.