Add pylint to sniff for PEP8 compliance

[ArtPoon]

Add as a GitHub action

[GopiGugan]

1. Go to "Actions" tab
2. Search for pylint
3. Click on configure
4. Add the following yaml:

   
   name: Pylint check

on: pull_request: branches:

• "master"
• "dev"

jobs: pylint-check: runs-on: ubuntu-latest

steps:
- name: Checkout
  uses: actions/checkout@v2

- name: Set up Python
  uses: actions/setup-python@v2
  with:
    python-version: '3.10'

- name: Create virtual environment
  run: python -m venv venv
  working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}

- name: Activate virtual environment and install dependencies
  run: |
    source venv/bin/activate
    python -m pip install --upgrade pip
    deactivate
  working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}

- name: Analyze code with Pylint
  run: |
    source venv/bin/activate
    pylint $(git ls-files '*.py')
    deactivate
  working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}

I've attached the list of warnings that pylint is currently throwing. We should resolve these before setting this Github Action or else our pull requests will fail
[pylint_report.log](https://github.com/PoonLab/covizu/files/14496057/pylint_report.log)

[ArtPoon]

@WilliamZekaiWang can you please split a new branch off dev and start working through the above log?

[ArtPoon]

python3 -m venv venv  # install virtual environment
source venv/bin/activate  # start environment
pip install pylint  # run this first time to install PyLint
pylint $(git ls-files '*.py')
deactivate  # exit environment

[GopiGugan]

@WilliamZekaiWang you do not need to address warnings for the deprecated files in covizu/deprecated. We should be able to ignore that directory when running pylint

[ArtPoon]

• @WilliamZekaiWang you can have free reign to determine what style changes are unnecessary and can be added to a list of exceptions for pylint
• A lot of the minor changes might be easier to deal with using an automated tool such as autopep8, although I would try this out on one script file first and run the unit tests to make sure that nothing has changed functionally

[WilliamZekaiWang]

I've used autopep8 for a lot of the files, it seems pretty good for the most part. The way autopep8 works is that you can control how aggressive it is with its changes by adding --aggressive however many times you want. I found that with no aggressives, it only removes white space at the end of lines, but as you add 2, it starts to introduce line breaks for lines exceeding > 100 characters in length (extra aggressives seemed to do nothing). I used 2 --aggressive for the files and it seemed to keep most things working!

There are a few things that I realized autopep8 can't change which I'm still manually editing:

• Wildcard imports
• Vague Exceptions
• Snake case/All caps for constant naming conventions
• Docstrings
• Too many arguments in the function (>5)
• Too many local variables in the function (>15)
• Too many nested blocks (>5)
• Redefining local variables

Sounds like a lot, but it does genuinely lighten the workload

I also used flynt to auto change .format to f-strings. It doesn't work too well, but it can get some of them.

[ArtPoon]

Thanks @WilliamZekaiWang for the update!

[WilliamZekaiWang]

finishing up now, I have finished all the files in the main directory and the covizu directory. They all seemed to pass the unittests as well

generally, there's one small thing that I'm iffy on changing:

def retrieve_genomes(
        by_lineage_in,
        known_seqs,
        ref_file,
        outgroup=None,
        earliest=True,
        callback=None):

For this function in timetree.py, pylint doesn't like it when there are greater than 5 arguments. However, I'm not sure how to change functions in these scenarios. One thought I had is that I change a few of these arguments to be a dictionary, such that when we call it:

retrieve_genomes(
        by_lineage_in,
        known_seqs,
        ref_file,
        {outgroup: None,
        earliest: True,
        callback: None})

also, pylint requires a docstring at the top of the file to explain what it does. I'm not quite sure what to add for most of the files

file specifically, there were 2 things I couldn't quite figure out. The first I can't find that error existing. The second error, I assumed value error?

batch.py:299:8: E0611: No name 'DuplicateDatabase' in module 'psycopg2.errors' (no-name-in-module)

line 299: from psycopg2.errors import DuplicateDatabase

beadplot.py:253:15: W0718: Catching too general exception BaseException (broad-exception-caught)

try:
   ctree = Phylo.read(args.tree, 'newick')
except ValueError as e:

[GopiGugan]

• Regarding the number of arguments for functions, we can increase the threshold to 6
• Please list out the functions you aren't sure about and we can work on adding docstrings together
• pyscopg2 - version 2.9.9 - We'll have to see if DuplicateDatabase was deprecated

[WilliamZekaiWang]

I have finished pep8-ing all files including utils and unittests

I think it's ok if we don't have docstrings for unittests. There are also a few TODO/FIXMEs in the files which raises a concern on pylint

specific functions/classes I don't really understand that need docstring:

• pangolin class in pangolin_utils.py
• 'SC2locator' in 'seq_utils.py'

Another except that I'm not sure the specific catch would be: https://github.com/PoonLab/covizu/blob/ec04d1c2e016b4ecfe07791410fbd429e41bd5ce/covizu/utils/batch_utils.py#L251-L290

Functions that have greater than 6 arguments:

• filter_problematic in gisaid_utils.py
• make_beadplots in batch_utils.py
• Callback's __init__ in progress_utils.py,

Functions that have too many local variables (>15) that I couldn't really figure out a way to break down:

• make_beadplots in batch_utils.py
• parse_mutations in seq_utils.py
• stream_local in local.py.

make_beadplots also has too many branches

I should also add I tried my best to solve the >15 local variables by adding more function. I think most of them help with readability except parse_nexus in timetree.py, which I think I made more messy

2 classes had too few public methods:

• SC2locator in seq_utils.py
• Callback in progress_utils.py

[ArtPoon]

• increase threshold for number of arguments that can be passed to a function
• force pylint to skip make_beadplots and other functions that have too many local variables or branches
• write unit tests for functions that don't have them!

[ArtPoon]

I forgot that we are in the middle of refactoring make_beadplots.py anyways in another branch, so pylint isn't wrong, the function is hideous (#497) Let's wait until these changes are merged into dev

[ArtPoon]

• for testing a function that returns a Bio.Phylo.BaseTree object, I use the BaseTree or Clade constructor and manually build a small test fixture to compare against the function output
• for scripts/mut_annotations_edit.py, a constellation is a combination of mutations that is characteristic of a specific SARS-CoV-2 lineage

[ArtPoon]

You might find examples of unit tests for tree objects in https://github.com/PoonLab/covizu/blob/ca3379dc823bda5b6e849820a861d60047699d84/tests/test_beadplot.py#L8

[ArtPoon]

Wait for PR #529 to be resolved before making a new PR from this branch into dev

[GopiGugan]

@WilliamZekaiWang to create PR

[ArtPoon]

Next step will be to issue a PR from dev to master, for which we will want to have set up GitHub actions for screening PEP8 compliance