Configure Neovim and pre-commit to run flake8 and pylint

[jonpspri]

Summary

• Enable flake8 and pylint linters in Neovim ALE configuration
• Enable flake8 pre-commit hook for automated code quality checks
• Remove obsolete fix-encoding-pragma hook (Python 3+ doesn't require encoding declarations)

Benefits

• Consistent linting feedback during development (IDE) and pre-commit
• Earlier detection of style issues before CI runs
• Unified code quality enforcement across development workflow

Test plan

• Verify flake8 runs in Neovim when editing Python files
• Verify pylint runs in Neovim when editing Python files
• Confirm pre-commit run flake8 executes successfully
• Verify encoding pragma is no longer added to Python files

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR enhances Python code quality enforcement by enabling flake8 and pylint linters in both the development environment (Neovim) and the pre-commit pipeline. The changes also remove the obsolete fix-encoding-pragma hook, which is unnecessary for Python 3+.

Key Changes

• Enabled flake8 and pylint in Neovim's ALE linter configuration for real-time feedback during development
• Uncommented and activated the flake8 pre-commit hook to catch issues before commits
• Removed the deprecated fix-encoding-pragma hook that added UTF-8 encoding declarations

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
.pre-commit-config.yaml	Enabled flake8 pre-commit hook and removed obsolete encoding pragma fixer
.nvim.lua	Added flake8 and pylint to ALE linters for Python files

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[jonpspri]

Pylint rolled out v4.x overnight, which we're not able to use because of other dependencies. So I reworked the GitHub CI/CD to use our dependencies (pyproject.toml) to determine the pylint to install and use. Thanks, uv!

[crivetimihai]

I'd rather not have flake8, pylint, etc. as part of pre-commit. Pre-commit has most of the cleanup tasks that change indentation, non-utf characters, etc.

Having pylint and flake8 as part of pre-commit takes too long.

[jonpspri]

I'd rather not have flake8, pylint, etc. as part of pre-commit. Pre-commit has most of the cleanup tasks that change indentation, non-utf characters, etc.

Having pylint and flake8 as part of pre-commit takes too long.

My thinking is that pre-commit when running as a commit hook (how I most rely on it) runs only on the files being committed, so placing them there presents a gatepost for incremental code improvement, given reasonable rules definition. Their execution time is order-n on the files being scanned, so for properly-sized commits the increase is negligible. That's the use case I'm trying to address.

And I HATE getting whacked in the GitHub lint workflows for something that could have been caught in pre-commit.

Having said that, I think we need to steer clear of using 'pre-commit run --all-files' as part of a regular commit or CI/CD lifecycle. That's something that can be controlled from the Makefile and the GitHub workflows independently.

(Let me know if I need to do some "typical commit" benchmarking to convince you.)

[jonpspri]

@crivetimihai Perhaps two commit files?

1. One with as much as possible of what the GitHub actions will test to support actual pre-commit hooks and reject commits that will just fail PR. This one can include pylint and flake8 for example, but would generally be used only on files actually changed in a commit.
2. A second lightweight version with the hooks that are unique to pre-commit to be used in the Makefile with the --all-files option. The '--config' option supports this.