Contributing to Mypy

Welcome! Mypy is a community project that aims to work for a wide range of Python users and Python codebases. If you're trying mypy on your Python code, your experience and what you can contribute are important to the project's success.

Code of Conduct

Everyone participating in the Mypy community, and in particular in our issue tracker, pull requests, and chat, is expected to treat other people with respect and more generally to follow the guidelines articulated in the Python Community Code of Conduct.

Getting started with development

Setup

(1) Fork the mypy repository

Within GitHub, navigate to https://github.com/python/mypy and fork the repository.

(2) Clone the mypy repository and enter into it

git clone git@github.com:<your_username>/mypy.git
cd mypy

(3) Create then activate a virtual environment

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# For Windows use
python -m venv venv
. venv/Scripts/activate

# For more details, see https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html#creating-virtual-environments

(4) Install the test requirements and the project

python -m pip install -r test-requirements.txt
python -m pip install -e .
hash -r  # This resets shell PATH cache, not necessary on Windows

Note You'll need Python 3.9 or higher to install all requirements listed in test-requirements.txt

Running tests

Running the full test suite can take a while, and usually isn't necessary when preparing a PR. Once you file a PR, the full test suite will run on GitHub. You'll then be able to see any test failures, and make any necessary changes to your PR.

However, if you wish to do so, you can run the full test suite like this:

python runtests.py

Some useful commands for running specific tests include:

# Use mypy to check mypy's own code
python runtests.py self
# or equivalently:
python -m mypy --config-file mypy_self_check.ini -p mypy

# Run a single test from the test suite (uses pytest substring expression matching)
python runtests.py test_name
# or equivalently:
pytest -n0 -k test_name

# Run all test cases in the "test-data/unit/check-dataclasses.test" file
python runtests.py check-dataclasses.test
# or equivalently:
pytest mypy/test/testcheck.py::TypeCheckSuite::check-dataclasses.test

# Run the formatters and linters
python runtests.py lint

For an in-depth guide on running and writing tests, see the README in the test-data directory.

Using `tox`

You can also use tox to run tests and other commands. tox handles setting up test environments for you.

# Run tests
tox run -e py

# Run tests using some specific Python version
tox run -e py311

# Run a specific command
tox run -e lint

# Run a single test from the test suite
tox run -e py -- -n0 -k 'test_name'

# Run all test cases in the "test-data/unit/check-dataclasses.test" file using
# Python 3.11 specifically
tox run -e py311 -- mypy/test/testcheck.py::TypeCheckSuite::check-dataclasses.test

# Set up a development environment with all the project libraries and run a command
tox -e dev -- mypy --verbose test_case.py
tox -e dev --override testenv:dev.allowlist_externals+=env -- env  # inspect the environment

If you don't already have tox installed, you can use a virtual environment as described above to install tox via pip (e.g., python -m pip install tox).

First time contributors

If you're looking for things to help with, browse our issue tracker!

In particular, look for:

good first issues
good second issues
documentation issues

You do not need to ask for permission to work on any of these issues. Just fix the issue yourself, try to add a unit test and open a pull request.

To get help fixing a specific issue, it's often best to comment on the issue itself. You're much more likely to get help if you provide details about what you've tried and where you've looked (maintainers tend to help those who help themselves). gitter can also be a good place to ask for help.

Interactive debuggers like pdb and ipdb are really useful for getting started with the mypy codebase. This is a useful tutorial.

It's also extremely easy to get started contributing to our sister project typeshed that provides type stubs for libraries. This is a great way to become familiar with type syntax.

Submitting changes

Even more excellent than a good bug report is a fix for a bug, or the implementation of a much-needed new feature. We'd love to have your contributions.

We use the usual GitHub pull-request flow, which may be familiar to you if you've contributed to other projects on GitHub. For the mechanics, see our git and GitHub workflow help page, or GitHub's own documentation.

Anyone interested in Mypy may review your code. One of the Mypy core developers will merge your pull request when they think it's ready.

If your change will be a significant amount of work to write, we highly recommend starting by opening an issue laying out what you want to do. That lets a conversation happen early in case other contributors disagree with what you'd like to do or have ideas that will help you do it.

The best pull requests are focused, clearly describe what they're for and why they're correct, and contain tests for whatever changes they make to the code's behavior. As a bonus these are easiest for someone to review, which helps your pull request get merged quickly! Standard advice about good pull requests for open-source projects applies; we have our own writeup of this advice.

Also, do not squash your commits after you have submitted a pull request, as this erases context during review. We will squash commits when the pull request is merged.

You may also find other pages in the Mypy developer guide helpful in developing your change.

Core developer guidelines

Core developers should follow these rules when processing pull requests:

Always wait for tests to pass before merging PRs.
Use "Squash and merge" to merge PRs.
Delete branches for merged PRs (by core devs pushing to the main repo).
Edit the final commit message before merging to conform to the following style (we wish to have a clean git log output):
- When merging a multi-commit PR make sure that the commit message doesn't contain the local history from the committer and the review history from the PR. Edit the message to only describe the end state of the PR.
- Make sure there is a single newline at the end of the commit message. This way there is a single empty line between commits in git log output.
- Split lines as needed so that the maximum line length of the commit message is under 80 characters, including the subject line.
- Capitalize the subject and each paragraph.
- Make sure that the subject of the commit message has no trailing dot.
- Use the imperative mood in the subject line (e.g. "Fix typo in README").
- If the PR fixes an issue, make sure something like "Fixes #xxx." occurs in the body of the message (not in the subject).
- Use Markdown for formatting.

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