[tutorial_ml:04] Leveraging pre-commit for Code Quality Assurance

3 min readDec 8, 2023

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Introduction

pre-commit is a powerful tool used to manage and maintain pre-commit hooks. These hooks are automated checks that run before each commit, ensuring that your code adheres to defined standards and helping to prevent common issues. Integrating pre-commit into your workflow can significantly enhance the code quality and consistency of your project.

Prior to installing pre-commit, make sure that your repository is a github repo.

Install Pre-Commit: Start by installing pre-commit using pip:

pip install pre-commit

Configure Pre-Commit Hooks: Create a .pre-commit-config.yaml file at the root of your repository. In this file, specify the hooks you want to use. For example:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/pygrep-hooks
    rev: v1.9.0
    hooks:
      - id: rst-backticks

  - repo: https://github.com/pycqa/flake8.git
    rev: 3.9.2
    hooks:
      - id: flake8
        exclude: 'test|env|docs'
        additional_dependencies:
          - "flake8-annotations==2.9.0"  - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/mirrors-mypy
    rev: v0.950
    hooks:
    -   id: mypy
        additional_dependencies:
          - "types-pytz"  - repo: https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
    rev: 0.5.0
    hooks:
      - id: nbstripout
        files: ".ipynb"  - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks
    rev: v4.1.0
    hooks:
      - id: trailing-whitespace
        exclude: ./tests/
      - id: end-of-file-fixer
        exclude: ./tests/
      - id: check-yaml

Install Hooks: Run pre-commit install to set up the git hook scripts. This command installs the pre-commit script into your .git/hooks/pre-commit.

pre-commit install

How Pre-Commit Enhances Your Workflow

Automated Code Quality Checks: Before each commit, pre-commit runs the configured hooks, automatically checking your code for formatting errors, trailing whitespaces, syntax errors in YAML files, and more.
Consistency Across the Team: By including the .pre-commit-config.yaml file in your repository, you ensure that every contributor adheres to the same coding standards, enhancing consistency and reducing code review time.
Customisation and Extensible: pre-commit supports a wide range of hooks for various languages and frameworks. You can customize it to suit the specific needs of your project, including setting up hooks for Python formatting (like flake8, black, isort) and more.

Integrating pre-commit into your Python project setup brings a structured approach to code quality. It automates the enforcement of coding standards, leading to cleaner, more maintainable, and error-free code.

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Next Section 005: Integrating GitHub Actions with Pre-Commit and Pytest