Additional features¶

This section discusses various features outside core mypy features.

The attrs package¶

attrs is a package that lets you define classes without writing boilerplate code. Mypy can detect uses of the package and will generate the necessary method definitions for decorated classes using the type annotations it finds. Type annotations can be added as follows:

import attr
@attr.s
class A:
    one: int = attr.ib()          # Variable annotation (Python 3.6+)
    two = attr.ib()  # type: int  # Type comment
    three = attr.ib(type=int)     # type= argument

If you’re using auto_attribs=True you must use variable annotations.

import attr
@attr.s(auto_attribs=True)
class A:
    one: int
    two: int = 7
    three: int = attr.ib(8)

Typeshed has a couple of “white lie” annotations to make type checking easier. attr.ib and attr.Factory actually return objects, but the annotation says these return the types that they expect to be assigned to. That enables this to work:

import attr
from typing import Dict
@attr.s(auto_attribs=True)
class A:
    one: int = attr.ib(8)
    two: Dict[str, str] = attr.Factory(dict)
    bad: str = attr.ib(16)   # Error: can't assign int to str

Caveats/Known Issues¶

The detection of attr classes and attributes works by function name only. This means that if you have your own helper functions that, for example, return attr.ib() mypy will not see them.
All boolean arguments that mypy cares about must be literal True or False. e.g the following will not work:
```
import attr
YES = True
@attr.s(init=YES)
class A:
    ...
```
Currently, converter only supports named functions. If mypy finds something else it will complain about not understanding the argument and the type annotation in __init__ will be replaced by Any.
Validator decorators and default decorators are not type-checked against the attribute they are setting/validating.
Method definitions added by mypy currently overwrite any existing method definitions.

Using a remote cache to speed up mypy runs¶

Mypy performs type checking incrementally, reusing results from previous runs to speed up successive runs. If you are type checking a large codebase, mypy can still be sometimes slower than desirable. For example, if you create a new branch based on a much more recent commit than the target of the previous mypy run, mypy may have to process almost every file, as a large fraction of source files may have changed. This can also happen after you’ve rebased a local branch.

Mypy supports using a remote cache to improve performance in cases such as the above. In a large codebase, remote caching can sometimes speed up mypy runs by a factor of 10, or more.

Mypy doesn’t include all components needed to set this up – generally you will have to perform some simple integration with your Continuous Integration (CI) or build system to configure mypy to use a remote cache. This discussion assumes you have a CI system set up for the mypy build you want to speed up, and that you are using a central git repository. Generalizing to different environments should not be difficult.

Here are the main components needed:

A shared repository for storing mypy cache files for all landed commits.
CI build that uploads mypy incremental cache files to the shared repository for each commit for which the CI build runs.
A wrapper script around mypy that developers use to run mypy with remote caching enabled.

Below we discuss each of these components in some detail.

Shared repository for cache files¶

You need a repository that allows you to upload mypy cache files from your CI build and make the cache files available for download based on a commit id. A simple approach would be to produce an archive of the .mypy_cache directory (which contains the mypy cache data) as a downloadable build artifact from your CI build (depending on the capabilities of your CI system). Alternatively, you could upload the data to a web server or to S3, for example.

Continuous Integration build¶

The CI build would run a regular mypy build and create an archive containing the .mypy_cache directory produced by the build. Finally, it will produce the cache as a build artifact or upload it to a repository where it is accessible by the mypy wrapper script.

Your CI script might work like this:

Run mypy normally. This will generate cache data under the .mypy_cache directory.
Create a tarball from the .mypy_cache directory.
Determine the current git master branch commit id (say, using git rev-parse HEAD).
Upload the tarball to the shared repository with a name derived from the commit id.

Mypy wrapper script¶

The wrapper script is used by developers to run mypy locally during development instead of invoking mypy directly. The wrapper first populates the local .mypy_cache directory from the shared repository and then runs a normal incremental build.

The wrapper script needs some logic to determine the most recent central repository commit (by convention, the origin/master branch for git) the local development branch is based on. In a typical git setup you can do it like this:

git merge-base HEAD origin/master

The next step is to download the cache data (contents of the .mypy_cache directory) from the shared repository based on the commit id of the merge base produced by the git command above. The script will decompress the data so that mypy will start with a fresh .mypy_cache. Finally, the script runs mypy normally. And that’s all!

Caching with mypy daemon¶

You can also use remote caching with the mypy daemon. The remote cache will significantly speed up the the first dmypy check run after starting or restarting the daemon.

The mypy daemon requires extra fine-grained dependency data in the cache files which aren’t included by default. To use caching with the mypy daemon, use the --cache-fine-grained option in your CI build:

$ mypy --cache-fine-grained <args...>

This flag adds extra information for the daemon to the cache. In order to use this extra information, you will also need to use the --use-fine-grained-cache option with dymypy start or dmypy restart. Example:

$ dmypy start -- --use-fine-grained-cache <options...>

Now your first dmypy check run should be much faster, as it can use cache information to avoid processing the whole program.