Code quality and formatters

[mags0ft]

Hello to you all,

I wanted to gather your thoughts on how to proceed with using formatters (like Black) to improve code legibility while keeping pull request diffs all tidy.

I'm currently working on an overhaul of src/sql_manager.py, and part of it is re-formatting the code. Automated formatters like Black to a major part of the work - however, this will of course result in a few hundreds of changed lines of code - making such pull requests hard to review for any maintainer (in this case, @Jeffser).

What would be a good way to do such overhauls/"tidying up"-pull requests in the future? Most parts of the Alpaca codebase are unformatted, and it'd be a pity leaving it that way.

We have the following options:

• the maintainer/owner of the repo just plows over all files using a formatter to make it PEP8-compliant and reduce the necessary changed LOCs per pull request that works on an overhaul or refactor - from what I've understood, this is planned for Alpaca some time in the future
• we just don't format the codebase at all
• we continue as before, resulting in hundreds of changed LOCs

What would be a viable option for this project?

Best greets and cheers!

@mags0ft

[Jeffser]

I do 99% of the code work anyways, I would much rater just keep doing things the same way I've been doing them

[mags0ft]

Of course, but it still wouldn't hurt to format the code. After all, that's basically a free step to improve code quality for everyone, both including yourself and any future contributors.

There may be times where people want to add a rather large feature or two - and formatted code is a lot easier to get into than unformatted one. You, the maintainer, would only benefit from this as it takes workload from you.