typeshed

About

Typeshed models function types for the Python standard library and Python builtins, as well as third party packages.

This data can e.g. be used for static analysis, type checking or type inference.

Format

Each Python module is represented by a .pyi "stub". This is a normal Python file (i.e., it can be interpreted by Python 3), except all the methods are empty. Python function annotations (PEP 3107) are used to describe the types the function has.

See PEP 484 for the exact syntax of the stub files.

Syntax example

The below is an excerpt from the types for the datetime module.

MAXYEAR = ...  # type: int
MINYEAR = ...  # type: int

class date(object):
    def __init__(self, year: int, month: int, day: int) -> None: ...
    @classmethod
    def fromtimestamp(cls, timestamp: int or float) -> date: ...
    @classmethod
    def fromordinal(cls, ordinal: int) -> date: ...
    @classmethod
    def today(self) -> date: ...
    def ctime(self) -> str: ...
    def weekday(self) -> int: ...

Directory structure

stdlib

This contains stubs for modules the Python standard library -- which includes pure Python modules, dynamically loaded extension modules, hard-linked extension modules, and the builtins.

third_party

Modules that are not shipped with Python but have a type description in Python go into third_party. Since these modules can behave differently for different versions of Python, third_party has version subdirectories, just like stdlib.

We're welcoming contributions (pull requests) for type definitions of third-party packages.

NOTE: When you're contributing a new stub for a package that you did not develop, please obtain consent of the package owner (this is specified in PEP 484). The best way to obtain consent is to file an issue in the third-party package's tracker and include the link to a positive response in your PR for typeshed.

Version directories

We store stubs for both Python 2 as well as Python 3. We also distinguish between minor versions (E.g. 3.2 <-> 3.3). To accomplish not having to duplicate modules that are the same between all minor versions, we have e.g. a top-level directory 3/ that contains all the stubs for Python 3. More specialized stubs go into e.g. 3.3/ and supersede the more generic stubs in 3/. Modules that are the same under both Python 2 and Python 3 go into 2and3/. Note that the only supported version of Python 2 is 2.7.

Combining multiple versions in a single file

According to PEP 484, type checkers are expected to understand simple version and platform checks. So the following syntax is legal in a pyi:

if sys.version_info >= (3,):
    # Python 3 specific definitions
else:
    # Python 2 specific definitions

This can be used for modules in 2and3/ that only have minor changes between Python 2 and Python 3. If the difference between versions is more drastic, it can make more sense to have seperate files in 2.x/ and 3.x/.

Running the tests

The tests are automatically run by Travis CI on every PR and push to the repo. There are two separate sets of tests: tests/mypy_test.py runs tests against mypy, while tests/pytype_tests.py runs tests against pytype. The script runtests.sh just runs both sets of tests.

Both sets of tests are shallow -- they verify that all stubs can be imported but they don't check whether stubs match their implementation (in the Python standard library or a third-party package). Also note that each set of tests has a blacklist of modules that are not tested at all. The blacklists also live in the tests directory.

To manually run the mypy tests, you need to have Python 3.3 or higher and pip3 install mypy-lang. To run 3.6 tests, you'll need to also pip3 install typed-ast needed for --fast-parser support.

To run the pytype tests, you need Python 2.7 and install pytype from its repo.

For mypy, if you are in the typeshed repo that is submodule of the mypy repo (so .. refers to the mypy repo), there's a shortcut to run the mypy tests that avoids installing mypy:

$ PYTHONPATH=.. python3 tests/mypy_test.py

This runs six sets of tests:

running mypy --python-version 3.6 --strict-optional --fast-parser # with 353 files
running mypy --python-version 3.5 --strict-optional # with 343 files
running mypy --python-version 3.4 --strict-optional # with 343 files
running mypy --python-version 3.3 --strict-optional # with 328 files
running mypy --python-version 3.2 --strict-optional # with 327 files
running mypy --python-version 2.7 --strict-optional # with 382 files

You can limit it to a single test by passing -p2 or -p3.5 e.g.

$ PYTHONPATH=.. python3 tests/mypy_test.py -p3.5
running mypy --python-version 3.5 --strict-optional # with 342 files