The History of the PyCQA

The PyCQA has a short, but interesting history.

Creation of the PyCQA

On 2014 September 12, Ian Cordasco sent an email to the code-quality mailing list with the idea to migrate Flake8 from Mercurial to Git.

The response was positive with the caveat that Free Software should be developed on similarly Free Software (GitLab). Ian was uncomfortable transferring the project to his own personal GitLab account so in jest and following the example of other groups (PyCA, PyPA, etc.), he created a GitLab group for the project. He also created a GitHub organization with the same name so he could mirror Flake8 to GitHub and accept contributions there. As the sole maintainer of flake8-docstrings, Ian also migrated that project from Mercurial to Git and onto GitLab (with a mirror on GitHub).

pep8 joins the organization on GitHub

After a while as the only member, Ian invited Ian Lee to join the PyCQA with pep8. Following some conversations, pep8 and its development team (mostly Ian Lee, but also its creator, Johann Rocholl, and former maintainer, Florent Xicluna) moved to the PyCQA in July of 2015.

Pylint and Astroid move to GitHub and the PyCQA

In October of 2015, Florian Bruhin sent an announcement to the code-quality mailing list that Pylint and Astroid would be moving to Git and GitHub from Mercurial and BitBucket. Over the course of the ensuing discussion, it was suggested that they also join the PyCQA and in December of 2015 the migration was complete.

mccabe and pep8-naming move to the PyCQA organization

Around the same time, Ian Cordasco moved more projects that he maintained into the PyCQA namespace. This time he moved both mccabe and pep8-naming which were previously maintained in the Flintwork organization.

pydocstyle (formerly pep257) moves to the PyCQA organization

In early January of 2016, Guido van Rossum asked that pep257 change its name. The usage of “PEP” was apparently creating confusion among users causing bugs to be reported to the PEP repository. Vladimir Keleshev, the creator of pep257, and Amir Rachum, the active maintainer, decided to move the project to the PyCQA. On 29 January 2016, the move and rename was complete and Amir joined the PyCQA with pydocstyle.

Baron and RedBaron join the PyCQA

On 2016 March 28, the author of Baron and RedBaron sent a message to the code-quality mailing list about a new release and the need for more contributors and maintainers. At that point, the organization extended an invitation for Laurent Peuch to join with both Baron and RedBaron. The transfer was completed on 2016 March 31.

Bandit moves to the PyCQA organization

On 2018 February 26, the authors of Bandit sent a request to the code-quality mailing list to accept Bandit from the OpenStack namespace to the PyCQA. The transfer was completed on 2018 May 2.

modernize joins PyCQA

On 2020 August 18, Thomas Grainger, as a maintainer of the project, requests that modernize be moved into the PyCQA organization. With the support of all project maintainers in place, the transfer was completed on 2020 August 23.

isort joins PyCQA

On 2020 August 23, Timothy Crosley, the author of isort sent a request for the project to be moved into the PyCQA organization. The transfer was completed on the same day.