README

This template is for any beginner/intermediate level python coder. It does not pretend to be perfect. Some cool tools are missing (auto-versionning, ...) but it is, I think, a solid start for one who wants to start a fresh python repo using basic tools for proper code and proper documentation.

Please feel free to give any comment or feedback.

Note

You can read this doc on the nice github page (with the generated html doc) or on the github code page.

Development tools

In order to create a new well-designed python repo, here are some basic tools that you could use.

poetry

poetry is a nice python management packages. Of course there are other alternatives like conda, pipenv,... It is mandatory to work in a virtual environment with python, so you don't have version package issues between your multiple python projects.

First, install poetry following the poetry official doc. Then, create a poetry repo:

poetry new <my-python-repo>

Create a virtual env in the same folder (especially for Visual Studio Code users) and activate it:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/Activate # Linux
.\.venv\Scripts\activate # Windows

Add the python .gitignore file. Copy paste the one ine the current repo or find one on github. Install some basics:

poetry add pylint pre-commit black isort commitizen
poetry add sphinx sphinx-rtd-theme sphinx_copybutton numpydoc

Let see what they are.

pre-commit

pre-commit allows you to execute a set of actions before commiting your code. You could check your code format, check that your notebooks are clean,...

As it is told in the pre-commit official doc:

Git hook scripts are useful for identifying simple issues before submission to code review. We run our hooks on every commit to automatically point out issues in code such as missing semicolons, trailing whitespace, and debug statements. By pointing these issues out before code review, this allows a code reviewer to focus on the architecture of a change while not wasting time with trivial style nitpicks.

Copy past the .pre-commit-config.yaml file and install the pre-commit by running:

pre-commit install

Or create your own following the pre-commit official doc

black

black is a code formatter. As it is told in black official doc:

Black is the uncompromising Python code formatter. By using it, you agree to cede control over minutiae of hand-formatting. In return, Black gives you speed, determinism, and freedom from pycodestyle nagging about formatting. You will save time and mental energy for more important matters.

pylint

pylint is a code checker. As it is told in pylint official doc:

Pylint is a tool that checks for errors in Python code, tries to enforce a coding standard and looks for code smells. It can also look for certain type errors, it can recommend suggestions about how particular blocks can be refactored and can offer you details about the code's complexity.

The pylint settings are loaded from the .pylintrc file. You can see many options there. Feel free to change some of them to fit your code guidelines. For example, I have made somes changes:

ignore-patterns

now it ignores the files ending with _no_pylint.py

variable-rgx

I have updated the accepted variable names as in data science, X is a common name

isort

As it is told in the isort official doc, isort your imports, so you don't have to.

isort is a Python utility / library to sort imports alphabetically, and automatically separated into sections and by type. It provides a command line utility, Python library and plugins for various editors to quickly sort all your imports. It requires Python 3.6+ to run but supports formatting Python 2 code too.

commitizen

As it is told in the commitizen official doc:

Commitizen is a tool designed for teams. Its main purpose is to define a standard way of committing rules and communicating it. The reasoning behind it is that it is easier to read, and enforces writing descriptive commits. Besides that, having a convention on your commits makes it possible to parse them and use them for something else, like generating automatically the version or a changelog.

You can customize it by modifying the .cz.toml file, especially the schema and schema_pattern entries. For more details, see their documentation.

Documentation tools

I won't get into too much details here, but still some that I find useful. A common tool to build and create doc in python is sphinx. We will set up everything so we have to write the less into the doc, the more into the code.

sphinx

Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation. See more details on the sphinx official doc.

To create the basic sphinx files, execute in your root directory:

mkdir docs
cd docs
sphinx-quickstart

To build your documentation, just make it:

cd docs
make html # Linux
make.bat html  # Windows

All the configurations are set up in the conf.py file. Copy/paste the one from this repo and change the Path setup and Project information sections.

Now what are the options I added ?

autodoc, autosummary, numpydoc

These are the developers best friends as it allows to automatically parse the doc from the code. Just add an api.rst file as in this repo, and put the names of your python module from your code. The extensions will create an autosummary_ folder that include the doc for your modules based on what is in the _templates directory. You can create other templates or change the existing if needed.

As for numpydoc, the extension allows to use numpy docstring format, which is the one I use. See an example of numpy docstring.

In this repo, I have coded fake modules and functions for you to see the results. Explore the few python files in this repo, and see the output automatically generated from these packages in the html doc. You could add in your doc some pages dedicated to whatever you want, such as in Wonderfull explaination from the doc2.rst file.

sphinx_rtd_theme

Sphinx allows you to build a doc based on a theme. The repo uses the readthedocs theme, but you can choose another one amongst the multiple available themes

sphinx_copybutton

This is a extension that allow to easily copy/paste the code from your doc. That could be very useful, especially for code example.

IDE tools

I only cover Visual Studio Code example for now, but there are mutliple nice IDE to use. The purpose of this section is to use nice settings to automatically perform some nice actions, such as black or isort.

Visual Studio Code

Using VSCode, you could use this settings file:

{
    "python.defaultInterpreterPath": "${workspaceRoot}\\.venv\\Scripts\\python.exe",
    "files.exclude": {
        "**/.git": true,
        "**/.svn": true,
        "**/.hg": true,
        "**/CVS": true,
        "**/.DS_Store": true,
        "**/__pycache__": true,
        "**/.mypy_cache": true,
        "**/.pytest_cache": true,
        "**/.venv": false,
        "**/cov.xml": true,
        "**/junit-unit.xml": true,
        "**/.coverage": true,
        "**/coverage-report": true,
        "**/junit.xml": true,
    },
    "python.formatting.provider": "black",
    "editor.formatOnSave": true,
    "autoDocstring.docstringFormat": "numpy",
    "python.linting.enabled": true,
    "python.linting.pylintEnabled": true,
    "editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
        "source.organizeImports": true,
    },
}

Note

The file is located in <my-python-repo>/.vscode/settings.json

"editor.formatOnSave": true

This will execute black each time you save a file.

"editor.codeActionsOnSave": {"source.organizeImports": true,}

Organizing your import on save with isort

"autoDocstring.docstringFormat": "numpy"

If you use numpydoc, you should definitely use the autodocstring extension from VSCode that automatically generates fromatted docstrings for your code. Just fill them !

Note also that using VSCode allows you to use very nice extentions such as:

• GitLens
• Python Extension Pack
• ...