Support loading options from a configuration file (pyproject.toml?)

[Varriount]

It would be nice if vulture supported using setup.cfg/setup.ini to retrieve whitelists, exclusions, etc. from.

[RJ722]

Hi @Varriount,

Thanks for the feedback, but I'm not sure that I entirely get what you're trying to say. Can you give an example of what exactly are you asking for, please?

[tarkatronic]

Alternatively, perhaps pyproject.toml support would be good, as this is becoming The Way for configuration in the Python world. An example entry for vulture might look like:

[tool.vulture]
min-confidence = 70
exclude = ".eggs,.git,.*cache,.tox,.venv,build,dist"

This would allow a user to have more determinism in their vulture runs, since they would not have to specify command line options every time.

I recently implemented this in tartufo, based heavily on the work in black.

This style of configuration is being adopted in many other large Python tools. A list of other tools can be found here: https://github.com/flying-sheep/awesome-python-packaging

In addition, mypy will be adding support as well.

[jendrikseipp]

@tarkatronic sounds interesting! It would be awesome if you could make a pull request.

[RJ722]

@jendrikseipp I can work on this. However, adding support for pyproject.toml would mean having an external dependency toml. Are you okay with it?

[jendrikseipp]

Good point. I'm not sure. Having no external dependencies certainly has appeal. Also, it's not clear which TOML library we should use (there are 3 Python TOML libraries). Maybe we should defer this issue until the dust has settled on how to declare options for linters and similar tools.

[jendrikseipp]

I guess we could make the TOML dependency optional like isort does. Still, it's not clear which TOML library to use.

[RJ722]

https://pypi.org/project/toml/ seems to be the standard and most popular (more than 18k users according to https://github.com/uiri/toml)

[jendrikseipp]

I checked which projects use which toml library:

• toml: black, isort, mypy (WIP)
• tomlkit: poetry

So it seems "toml" is indeed the way to go. Especially, since we only need to load TOML, not modify it.

[jendrikseipp]

isort now bundles a vendorized copy of toml. We could probably do the same.

[exhuma]

Having some configuration support would be helpful for CI pipelines as well. Until recently I have been in the camp being "against yet another dependency" just for project development support like TOML. But a recent episode on a podcast changed my mind about this... let me find it back... here it is.

I would be willing to work on this if you let me know which way you'd like to go. I see either pyproject.toml with a vendored parser or a simple .ini file. I'm not all too opposed to adding a real dependency for a TOML parser instead of vendoring but I am leaning more towards vendoring too.

@jendrikseipp let me know if you want me to go ahead with one of those solutions.

[exhuma]

nb, this issue might benefit from a better subject. The primary topic is the be able to have config-values in a config file in addition to the cli-args. Might help others find it a bit better.

[jendrikseipp]

@exhuma thanks for the link! I'll listen to the episode and will get back to you on this.

[exhuma]

@jendrikseipp I will likely start to dabble around with it tomorrow, just to familiarise myself with the project structure of vulture and toml. I don't mind if I need to rewrite that work as my main aim will be the aforementioned familiarisation 😉 If I'm happy with the result I'll open a PR, and you can go nutters with the review. I have a thick skin and am always fairly critical in reviews I do myself, so you don't need to worry about scaring me away 😉

[jendrikseipp]

@exhuma Sounds great! I listened to the podcast and think that the best solution is to add a dependency on toml. I recommend looking at how other projects use toml and pyproject.toml (e.g., black) to avoid reinventing the wheel :-)

[exhuma]

I recommend looking at how other projects use toml and pyproject.toml (e.g., black) to avoid reinventing the wheel :-)

will do

[exhuma]

Done. Let me know what you think :)

[RJ722]

Now that #215 has merged, let's close this?

[jendrikseipp]

Good point :-)