Can pylint check for a static comment / copyright notice at the top of all documents?

Question

Can pylint be configured to check for a specific static text such as a copyright notice at the top of every file?

E.g. validate that the following two lines begin every file:

# Copyright Spacely Sprockets, 2018-2062
#

Answer 1

You could write your own checker:

from pylint.checkers import BaseRawFileChecker

class CopyrightChecker(BaseRawFileChecker):
    """ Check the first line for copyright notice
    """

    name = 'custom_copy'
    msgs = {'W9902': ('Include copyright in file',
                      'file-no-copyright',
                      ('Your file has no copyright')),
            }
    options = ()

    def process_module(self, node):
        """process a module
        the module's content is accessible via node.stream() function
        """
        with node.stream() as stream:
            for (lineno, line) in enumerate(stream):
                if lineno == 1:
                    # Check for copyright notice
                    # if it fails add an error message
                    self.add_message('file-no-copyright',
                                     line=lineno)


    def register(linter):
        """required method to auto register this checker"""
        linter.register_checker(CopyrightChecker(linter))

See more about custom checkers in the pylint documentation. Also this excellent post about the subject.

UPDATE Thanks to @Diego in the comments for noticing that this was outdated, now we can just inherit from BaseRawFileChecker.