Re: [BuildStream] [Development topic] Use black to format code

[Chandan Singh <chandan chandansingh net>]

Hi Jürg,

> Are they planning to stabilize the formatting style? Could it make
> sense to wait for that to happen?
>
> I really want to avoid periodic reformat commits. A one-time reformat
> commit is bad enough due to likely requiring manual rebase of all
> development branches. Periodic reformatting would probably outweigh the
> advantages of automatic formatting. It depends on how much the
> formatting style changes, of course.
>
> Cheers,
> Jürg

I get what you're saying, periodic reformatting commits can be rather
annoying. Black describes itself as a beta product at this time, and
doesn't provide a timeline for its production release. Having said
that, the format has been relatively stable in the past. Other than
bug fixes and minor changes, there aren't any major changes planned.

We've been using Black in some other projects, and haven't required to
reformat often, especially if we control its version tightly.

Inevitably, some merge requests will need rebasing, at least this one
time. However, since the output is stable (with a given version),
folks can just run Black on their branch before rebasing, and that
should work without manual intervention in the vast majority of cases.

Given that Black's format is not changing frequently, I tend to think
the benefits of automatic formatting will be worth it.

Cheers!
Chandan