flake8-author is a Flake8 extension that checks Python modules for module-level __author__ attributes.

There is no official standard on __author__ usage. It is used largely by convention. Guido had this to say back in 2001:

Anothor source of discomfort is that there's absolutely no standard for this kind of meta-data variables. We've got __version__, and I believe we once agreed on that (in 1994 or so :-). But __author__? __credits__? What next -- __cute_signoff__?

This extension can therefore be configured to explicitly require or forbid __author__ attributes. By default, __author__ is considered optional.

If the __author__ attribute is allowed, its value can also be validated using a configurable regular expression pattern.

The __author__ attribute is generally assigned to a string, but multiple authors can be listed using a list (or tuple or set) of strings.

Install from PyPI using pip:

$ pip install flake8-author

The extension will be activated automatically by flake8. You can verify that it has been loaded by inspecting the flake8 --version string.

$ flake8 --version
6.1.0 (author: 2.1.0, ...) CPython 3.11.5 on Darwin

This extension adds three new error codes (using the A40 prefix):

• A400: a module-level __author__ attribute is required
• A401: __author__ attributes are not allowed
• A402: __author__ attribute value does not match pattern

Configuration values are specified in the [flake8] section of your config file or as command line arguments (e.g. --author-attribute=required).

• author-attribute: "optional", "required", "forbidden" (default: optional)
• author-pattern: __author__ validation re pattern (default: '')