The aim of this module is to provide a common base representation of python source code for projects such as pychecker, pyreverse, pylint... Well, actually the development of this library is essentially governed by pylint's needs. It used to be called logilab-astng. It provides a compatible representation which comes from the `_ast` module. It rebuilds the tree generated by the builtin _ast module by recursively walking down the AST and building an extended ast. The new node classes have additional methods and attributes for different usages. They include some support for static inference and local name scopes. Furthermore, astroid builds partial trees by inspecting living objects.