Caching

Import Linter uses a file-based cache to speed up subsequent linting runs.

On a large code base this can result in much faster runs.

What is cached

A run of lint-imports involves two phases:

Building the graph: in which the packages are scanned to identify all the imports between their modules, which is stored in a Grimp graph. (Grimp is a separate Python package used by Import Linter).
Contract checking: in which the graph is checked for compliance with each contract.

Caching is used in the first step but not the second. For more information about how this works, see Grimp’s caching documentation.

Location of the cache

Cache files are written, by default, to an .import_linter_cache directory in the current working directory. This directory can be changed by passing a different cache_dir argument e.g.:

lint-imports --cache-dir /path/to/cache

Disabling caching

To skip using (and writing to) the cache, pass --no-cache:

lint-imports --no-cache

Concurrency

Caching isn’t currently concurrency-safe. Specifically, if you have two concurrent processes writing to the same cache files, you might experience incorrect behaviour.