#321 A Memorial To Apps Past

Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub.

Connect with the hosts

• Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
• Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org
• Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/stream/live to be part of the audience. Usually Tuesdays at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Michael #1: git-sim

• Visually simulate Git operations in your own repos with a single terminal command.
• Generates an image (default) or video visualization depicting the Git command's behavior.
• Features
  • Run a one-liner git-sim command in the terminal to generate a custom Git command visualization (.jpg) from your repo
  • Supported commands: log, status, add, restore, commit, stash, branch, tag, reset, revert, merge, rebase, cherry-pick
  • Generate an animated video (.mp4) instead of a static image using the --animate flag (note: significant performance slowdown, it is recommended to use --low-quality to speed up testing and remove when ready to generate presentation-quality video)
  • Choose between dark mode (default) and light mode
  • Animation only: Add custom branded intro/outro sequences if desired
  • Animation only: Speed up or slow down animation speed as desired
• See images and animations on the github readme.

Brian #2: Why I Like Nox

• Hynek Schlawack
• I like tox and have wanted to try nox but couldn’t think of good reasons for a switch.
• Hynek is a fan of both, so it’s nice to read his perspective.
• The article starts with comparing doing the same thing in both
  • testing with Python 3.10 and 3.11 and adding the ability to pass in pytest arguments.
  • even with this example, I do admit that the nox example is easier to read, but a bit more verbose.
• A second example of running a specific example combination of library and Python is quite a bit longer in nox, but there’s an interesting commentary: “… this is longer than the tox equivalent. But that’s because it’s more explicit and anyone with a passing understanding of Python can deduce what’s happening here – including myself, looking at it in a year. Explicit can be good, actually.”
• Other benefits:
  • It’s a Python file with Python functions, you have the all of Python at your disposal when developing sessions to run.
  • It’s not “ini format”. Complex ini files get out of hand quickly.
  • nox has Python versions as fist class selectors.
• Final note: “Again, this article is not a call to abandon tox and move all your projects to Nox – I haven’t done that myself and I don’t plan to. But if my issues resonate with you, there’s an option!”

Michael #3: I scanned every package on PyPi and found 57 live AWS keys

• Scanning every release published to PyPi found 57 valid access keys.
• Detecting AWS keys is actually fairly simple. A keypair consists of two components: the key ID and the key secret.
• The key ID can be detected with the regular expression ((?:ASIA|AKIA|AROA|AIDA)([A-Z0-7]{16}))
• The secret key can be detected with a much more general [a-zA-Z0-9+/]{40}.
• Static PyPI data: github.com/orf/pypi-data

Brian #4: Getting Started With Property-Based Testing in Python With Hypothesis and pytest

• Rodrigo Girão Serrão
• Hypothesis and property based testing can be overwhelming at first.
• So focused intro posts are quite helpful.
• This post focuses on a couple of examples, gcd(), greatest common divisor, and my_sort(), a custom list sorter.
• Good discussion of how property based testing is different and how to do it successfully, especially the order of development:
  • focus on developing properties of correct answers
  • develop a test that checks those properties
  • use hypothesis strategies to come up with input
  • pick @examples if necessary
  • narrow the range of input if necessary
    • caveat: I would have preferred hypothesis.assume() to limiting input in the first example. assume(not (n == m == 0))
    • see https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/details.html#hypothesis.assume
  • add more testing outside of hypothesis
    • In my experience it’s often easier for me to develop code with non-hypothesis test cases, then follow up with hypothesis. But after works also.
• The mental gymnastics of thinking of properties for algorithmic code is worthwhile.

Extras

Michael:

• First stream from the sweet new mac mini.
• Ivory released for Mastodon, but others too.
• Nice memorial https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/
• We’ll be doing a live in-person event at PyCon, become a friend of the show to get notified.

Joke: Didn't come here to be called out