Python Project Setup Checklist

PythonProjectSetupChecklist.md

• Define project directory structure in ASCII format in your README.md, like below:

  - ProjectRoot
    - src
    - tests
      - data
      - unit
      - integration
    - docs
    - examples
    - project.toml
    - README.md

• Use Python's inbuilt venv to create project's virtual env within the directory like below:

  pip version
  pip install --upgrade pip
  pip version
  pip list
  python -m venv .venv
  source .venv/bin/activate # to activate virtual environmant
  deactivate # to deactivate virtual environment

• Define dev-setup steps in README.md
• Use Python 3.x latest stable version. Strictly no to Python 2.
• Use contemporary .toml instead of legacy setup.py for project packaging and installation.
• Use pylint and optionally flake8 or black or anything else for linting
• Use pytest for unit testing. It is pretty easy and popular too for this.
• Use pytest-cov for test coverage report
• Use python-dotenv for loading externalized properties into code. You should externalize things like API-keys, Passwords, Client-ID, and any other environment specific property.
• If you are a productivity junkie like me, you will have something like init-dev-env.sh defined in the project to make project onboarding of new dev easier. A sample of how it looks like in my project or that of the teams I lead would look like below:

  #!/usr/bin/env zsh
  source .venv/bin/activate
  pip list
  alias pytu='pytest tests/unit --cache-clear -s'
  alias pyti='pytest tests/integration --cache-clear -s'
  alias pyt='pytest --cache-clear -s'
  alias pyl='pylint . --output-format=colorized'
  alias flk='flake8'
  echo "You are now good for development"