Add type stubs

[teskje]

It would be nice to have type stubs shipped with the ssdeep Python package to enable static type checking with mypy.

Is this something you are interested in? If so I would be willing to prepare a PR for this.

[phibos]

Looks like we have to drop support for Python < 3.5 for type hints. PEP 484 -- Type Hints. Am I right?

Would this also improve the execution speed or is it only for static type checking?

[thavelick]

@ra-kete Hi, I've created stubs for this project:

• https://github.com/thavelick/python-ssdeep-stubs/
• https://pypi.org/project/ssdeep-stubs/

By running pip install ssdeep-stubs you should be able to use ssdeep with mypy.

@phibos - You can distribute mypy stubs without breaking compatibility with older version of python. You'd simply distribute type annotation (*.pyi) files alongside your existing .py files. Earlier versions of python will just ignore these. But for now, mypy users can just use the stub package I've provided.

[phibos]

@thavelick thanks for your work. Any reason why we should use stub files instead of type hinting in the source?

[thavelick]

I can't think of a good reason. I think mypy just makes it possible to distribute stubs separately in case package maintainers don't want to do it. I probably should've just submitted a PR, but I actually found this issue after I had everything pretty much ready to go. At any rate I can deprecate my package if this project ends up adding annotations directly

[mimi89999]

Any reason why we should use stub files instead of type hinting in the source?

That would require dropping support for old Python releases, but I doubt that anybody cares about them.

[phibos]

Any reason why we should use stub files instead of type hinting in the source?

That would require dropping support for old Python releases, but I doubt that anybody cares about them.

@mimi89999 I think you are right. We can drop it in the next release.

[phibos]

I have added type hints. Feel free to test and please report if something is missing.