How to easily switch flake8 between python 2 and 3

Question

I'm working with python 2.7 scripts that I need to update to python 3.8 while maintaining backwards compatibility. vim-flake8 on my mac has been working great up until now for python 2.7, but I can't find a why to easily swap between python 2 and 3 on the fly. This is because Flake8 is "smart" about whether to use 2 or 3 based on which one runs it - there doesn't appear to be an option/argument.

How can I tell vim-flake8 which python version to evaluate my scripts as?

Ideally I would like to have two hotkeys (F2, F3) that allow me to run either, similar to 'python -m flake8' or 'python3 -m flake8'. I could write this directly into my vimrc, but the flake8 plugin has some really nice features to help quickly make fixes. I could not find any mention of swapping python versions on the vim-flake8 github.

Answer 1

This set of commands allowed me to run flake8 through either python 2 or 3 at a whim. It uses the g:flake8_cmd command as recommended in the comments by filbranden and it is in fact listed on the vim-flake8 github.

This isn't 100% however because there is some odd behavior. For one the highlighting seems slightly off; but vim-flake also didn't error handle quite right as initially vim couldn't find python3 but was still saying Flake8 check OK.

function Python2Flake()
   let g:flake8_cmd = "python -m flake8"
   call flake8#Flake8()

:endfunction

autocmd Filetype python map <buffer> <F2> :call Python2Flake()

function Python3Flake()
    let g:flake8_cmd = "python3 -m flake8"
    call flake8#Flake8()

:endfunction

autocmd Filetype python map <buffer> <F3> :call Python3Flake()