I have code being written for python3.5 target. I have no control of my development environment and it was recently upgraded to 3.8. Now the pylint spits out 100s of messages for features that are not available in python3.5 (e.g. f-strings).
I do not have sudo rights so I doubt I can install my own 3.5 binary. What should I do?
You can try to set the py-version to 3.5, it's unlikely to work for everything as it was added after python 3.5 was dropped from pylint so not with python 3.5 in mind but it's going to work for f-strings. You could also disable the message concerning the fstring in your pylintrc:
[MASTER]
# Minimum supported python version
py-version = 3.5.0
[MESSAGES CONTROL]
# Disable the message, report, category or checker with the given id(s). You
# can either give multiple identifiers separated by comma (,) or put this
# option multiple times (only on the command line, not in the configuration
# file where it should appear only once).You can also use "--disable=all" to
# disable everything first and then re-enable specific checks. For example, if
# you want to run only the similarities checker, you can use "--disable=all
# --enable=similarities". If you want to run only the classes checker, but have
# no Warning level messages displayed, use"--disable=all --enable=classes
# --disable=W"
disable=consider-using-f-string, f-string-without-interpolation, ...