Common Python formatting

[jpgoldberg]

I am finding myself in a sea of merge conflicts even when I think I am making a minor change., I suspect that some of this is due to me (tacitly) using a different fill formatting convention and getting loads of whitespace. That is, I am seeing diffs reported where I do not need a difference.

I would like to recommend that we settle on a common python formatting and linting system. Personally, I would prefer using ruff and we create a ruff.toml file for any non-default settings and for settling on a line length. But I will go along with what others prefer, as long as we settle on something.

[tomato42]

there's already black being used, executed in CI...

also, why you're getting merge conflicts when doing small changes?! are you sure your main branch is up to date?

[GiacomoPope]

The good news is that I've done most (all?) the things I want so there will be less change

Maybe we should add a black config file as @tomato42 set the line length to 79 which is non-standard

[GiacomoPope]

I'm not sure where we are with this, but I think it can be closed unless you have concerns @jpgoldberg

[tomato42]

+1 for closing