Developing in a group project is easier and simpler if everybody can agree on a simple and consistent convention for coding standards. Because of its wide acceptance in the python community and good documentation, we have decided to follow the PEP8 standard. To that end we use a python module named pylint that will scan the code repository and determine if there are any PEP8 violations. Certain lines and files may be ignored by pylint if and only if the violation is directly caused by a django convention or standard.
A make target named lint has been set up to make running pylint simple and easy. Simply run the command:
$ make lint
Any violations should be explained by the output of pylint. Any confusing messages can be looked up in the pylint docs.
Aside from the PEP8 conventions, any other coding style preferences follow here.
Pylint defaults to a maximum line length of 100 characters, however we prefer to keep lines shorter than 80 characters.
###Long Argument Lists Long argument lists that cause lines to be long can be broken into multiple lines. If that is the case we prefer that the following form be used
function_name(
argument1,
argument2,
argument3,
{
"key1": "value1",
"key2": "value2"
}
)