General improvements list

[eddiebergman]

Just some things noted that might be nice to know about and I can contribute. Non are urgent, just documenting them:

• The tests folder should be moved up one directory as they aren't part of the source code. Doing so means they aren't included with a distribution if CARL is put up on PyPi.

• I would recommend using pytest over the built in unittest, it's a lot more flexible but this probably needs some guidance.

• Seems like the .env file in the src directory shouldn't be required?

• The setup.cfg could be a little more explicit, especially with declaring where the package actually is. Here's some reading if you like.

• Seems everything to do with submodules is no longer relevant, can delete the .gitmodules file and the instructions in the README.md with respect to --recursive.

• Could set up Github actions to do some general checks

  • Run tests
  • Set up code coverage, gives reports like this and even more detailed things like this.
  • Can do checks for formatting, using black, isort, flake8 and mypy.

• Setup a pyproject.toml and .flake8 which will configure all of those formatting tools

• A Makefile to do basic things which make contributers life easier and your own life easier. An example can be seen in this PR for autosklearn.

• Pip has a hard time resolving all the dependencies for version #b7382fe, not that easy to fix but freezing requirements to a specific version might help that. Has other issues down the line though, such as testing new versions of libraries or getting the latest updates.

[TheEimer]

Thank you so much, we'll definitely get on it, these seem like suggestions that will make our lives much easier in the long run!

[benjamc]

Thanks a lot @eddiebergman ! This looks very reasonable. Maybe you have some time in the next few weeks to answer questions about some of these if we are stuck?

[TheEimer]

We ignored this for a while, but as far as I can see we currently should fix:

• unittest to pytest
• install resolve (before we deploy to PyPI, ideally)