Fluffing up the linter

[bug-or-feature]

Great to hear that PEP8 is an aspirational goal for this project.

@robcarver17 would you support an initiative to formalise that goal?

I don't think it could work like Black; if we added flake8 or similar to the linter now it would fail spectacularly with ~1000 problems. Black can fix, but flake8 only reports. I think it could work if we added it with all the rules disabled initially. And then turn on the rules one at a time, fixing the issues gradually. I think a good chunk of issues could be cleared with a few low-hanging fruit rules: unused imports and variables for example. I suspect some rules would need to stay disabled forever.

I'm happy to drive this if you approve

[robcarver17]

Let's see what the other contributors think....

[tgibson11]

Ha ha! You mean the other contributor who complains about black? 😁

Reading about flake8, it seems like it does a few different things. My opinion would probably depend on how it is used.

• Linter (pyflakes): I think this would be great
• PEP8 enforcement: I assume black is already doing this more strictly than flake8, but correct me if I'm wrong
• Code complexity check: also seems great

As long as it is used sensibly, this seems mostly like a good idea.

I think it could produce some side-projects for people who want to contribute by cleaning up code that violates one of the rules.

[tgibson11]

PEP8 enforcement: I assume black is already doing this more strictly than flake8, but correct me if I'm wrong

I realized after I wrote that, that there is more to PEP-8 than just formatting. It wouldn't just be redundant.