Support quality assurance of Python code

[LeoHuckvale]

Really excited about being able to run Python code directly in Excel!

However, as a best-practice enthusiast, the first questions that come to my mind are:

• how do we ensure embedded code meets local organisational or industry-wide standards of code quality and best practice? (Such as we might traditionally achieve with tools like PyLint or PEP8.)
• how do we implement unit tests and other such tests to validate that embedded code delivers the expected results for a given range of inputs?

[jflam]

To be honest, we haven't discussed either of these issues in our design meetings yet. Not for lack of wanting to do something here; there are many possible ways that we can do the things that you suggest.

If you have any ideas on either of these, please do share!

[LeoHuckvale]

Thanks for the positive engagement, @jflam !

As far as code linting goes, one could have a separate container which lints code in cells on edit, and flags the cell in the same way Excel does if there's a formula error. You could have a general config for this according to generally accepted norms like PEP8 etc. but eventually you'd want to be able to customise the configuration according to organisational needs.

Not sure how unit tests could work. That's probably a question to address in line with #7 where you have more modular code.

[jflam]

Thanks for the suggestion. We definitely want to improve the code editing experience in the future and being able to use existing off the shelf tooling, e.g., Black is on our radar.