All patches and comments are welcome. Please squash your changes to logical
commits before using git-format-patch and git-send-email to
patches@git.madduck.net.
If you'd read over the Git project's submission guidelines and adhered to them,
I'd be especially grateful.
1 [//]: # "NOTE: THIS FILE WAS AUTOGENERATED FROM README.md"
3 # Installation and usage
7 _Black_ can be installed by running `pip install black`. It requires Python 3.6.0+ to
8 run but you can reformat Python 2 code with it, too.
10 ### Install from GitHub
12 If you can't wait for the latest _hotness_ and want to install from GitHub, use:
14 `pip install git+git://github.com/psf/black`
18 To get started right away with sensible defaults:
21 black {source_file_or_directory}
24 You can run _Black_ as a package if running it as a script doesn't work:
27 python -m black {source_file_or_directory}
30 ## Command line options
32 _Black_ doesn't provide many options. You can list them by running `black --help`:
35 Usage: black [OPTIONS] [SRC]...
37 The uncompromising code formatter.
40 -c, --code TEXT Format the code passed in as a string.
41 -l, --line-length INTEGER How many characters per line to allow.
44 -t, --target-version [py27|py33|py34|py35|py36|py37|py38]
45 Python versions that should be supported by
46 Black's output. [default: per-file auto-
49 --pyi Format all input files like typing stubs
50 regardless of file extension (useful when
51 piping source on standard input).
53 -S, --skip-string-normalization
54 Don't normalize string quotes or prefixes.
55 --check Don't write the files back, just return the
56 status. Return code 0 means nothing would
57 change. Return code 1 means some files
58 would be reformatted. Return code 123 means
59 there was an internal error.
61 --diff Don't write the files back, just output a
62 diff for each file on stdout.
64 --color / --no-color Show colored diff. Only applies when
67 --fast / --safe If --fast given, skip temporary sanity
68 checks. [default: --safe]
70 --include TEXT A regular expression that matches files and
71 directories that should be included on
72 recursive searches. An empty value means
73 all files are included regardless of the
74 name. Use forward slashes for directories
75 on all platforms (Windows, too). Exclusions
76 are calculated first, inclusions later.
79 --exclude TEXT A regular expression that matches files and
80 directories that should be excluded on
81 recursive searches. An empty value means no
82 paths are excluded. Use forward slashes for
83 directories on all platforms (Windows, too).
84 Exclusions are calculated first, inclusions
85 later. [default: /(\.eggs|\.git|\.hg|\.mypy
86 _cache|\.nox|\.tox|\.venv|\.svn|_build|buck-
89 --force-exclude TEXT Like --exclude, but files and directories
90 matching this regex will be excluded even
91 when they are passed explicitly as arguments
93 -q, --quiet Don't emit non-error messages to stderr.
94 Errors are still emitted; silence those with
97 -v, --verbose Also emit messages to stderr about files
98 that were not changed or were ignored due to
101 --version Show the version and exit.
102 --config FILE Read configuration from FILE path.
103 -h, --help Show this message and exit.
106 _Black_ is a well-behaved Unix-style command-line tool:
108 - it does nothing if no sources are passed to it;
109 - it will read from standard input and write to standard output if `-` is used as the
111 - it only outputs messages to users on standard error;
112 - exits with code 0 unless an internal error occurred (or `--check` was used).
114 ## Using _Black_ with other tools
116 While _Black_ enforces formatting that conforms to PEP 8, other tools may raise warnings
117 about _Black_'s changes or will overwrite _Black_'s changes. A good example of this is
118 [isort](https://pypi.org/p/isort). Since _Black_ is barely configurable, these tools
119 should be configured to neither warn about nor overwrite _Black_'s changes.
121 Actual details on _Black_ compatible configurations for various tools can be found in
122 [compatible_configs](https://github.com/psf/black/blob/master/docs/compatible_configs.md).
124 ## Migrating your code style without ruining git blame
126 A long-standing argument against moving to automated code formatters like _Black_ is
127 that the migration will clutter up the output of `git blame`. This was a valid argument,
128 but since Git version 2.23, Git natively supports
129 [ignoring revisions in blame](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-blame#Documentation/git-blame.txt---ignore-revltrevgt)
130 with the `--ignore-rev` option. You can also pass a file listing the revisions to ignore
131 using the `--ignore-revs-file` option. The changes made by the revision will be ignored
132 when assigning blame. Lines modified by an ignored revision will be blamed on the
133 previous revision that modified those lines.
135 So when migrating your project's code style to _Black_, reformat everything and commit
136 the changes (preferably in one massive commit). Then put the full 40 characters commit
137 identifier(s) into a file.
140 # Migrate code style to Black
141 5b4ab991dede475d393e9d69ec388fd6bd949699
144 Afterwards, you can pass that file to `git blame` and see clean and meaningful blame
148 $ git blame important.py --ignore-revs-file .git-blame-ignore-revs
149 7a1ae265 (John Smith 2019-04-15 15:55:13 -0400 1) def very_important_function(text, file):
150 abdfd8b0 (Alice Doe 2019-09-23 11:39:32 -0400 2) text = text.lstrip()
151 7a1ae265 (John Smith 2019-04-15 15:55:13 -0400 3) with open(file, "r+") as f:
152 7a1ae265 (John Smith 2019-04-15 15:55:13 -0400 4) f.write(formatted)
155 You can even configure `git` to automatically ignore revisions listed in a file on every
159 $ git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs
162 **The one caveat is that GitHub and GitLab do not yet support ignoring revisions using
163 their native UI of blame.** So blame information will be cluttered with a reformatting
164 commit on those platforms. (If you'd like this feature, there's an open issue for
165 [GitLab](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/31423) and please let GitHub
168 ## NOTE: This is a beta product
170 _Black_ is already [successfully used](#used-by) by many projects, small and big. It
171 also sports a decent test suite. However, it is still very new. Things will probably be
172 wonky for a while. This is made explicit by the "Beta" trove classifier, as well as by
173 the "b" in the version number. What this means for you is that **until the formatter
174 becomes stable, you should expect some formatting to change in the future**. That being
175 said, no drastic stylistic changes are planned, mostly responses to bug reports.
177 Also, as a temporary safety measure, _Black_ will check that the reformatted code still
178 produces a valid AST that is equivalent to the original. This slows it down. If you're
179 feeling confident, use `--fast`.