lp-lint-doctest is a style checker for Python doctests stored in text files (as opposed to doctests stored in docstrings), optimized for use in Launchpad development. It applies the following checks:

• Comments should be in the narrative part of the doctest (i.e. in unindented text) rather than in Python examples.

• Narrative text lines are limited to 79 characters.

• Source lines in examples (beginning with >>> or ...) are limited to 71 characters.

• Expected output lines in examples are limited to 75 characters.

• Source and expected output lines should be indented by exactly four spaces.

• There should be no trailing whitespace.

• reStructuredText-style headings should be used, not MoinMoin-style.

A # noqa comment in any source line in an example suppresses the comment, line length, indentation, and trailing whitespace checks for all lines in that example.

In addition, lp-lint-doctest runs pyflakes on the accumulated source code of each doctest file.

This project was split out from Curtis Hovey’s pocket-lint project. Since that was written, many other excellent linters have arisen for most of the other source types supported by pocket-lint, but there seems to be no other viable replacement for its doctest checks.

lp-lint-doctest supports pre-commit. To use it, add the following to the repos section of your .pre-commit-config.yaml file:

-   repo: https://git.launchpad.net/lp-lint-doctest
    rev: ''  # pick a git tag to point to
    hooks:
    -   id: lp-lint-doctest

If you need to add a custom doctest option flag, then add args: [--allow-option-flag, MY_CUSTOM_FLAG_NAME].