Add python linting workflow to check quality of python code

[rockett-m]

See issue #264

This runs on pull-requests and push operations to the codebase. It rates all the python code out of 10 and all style/syntax errors are found in the report. Having a score < 10 will not fail the run as I specified.

Users can manually run pylint --rcfile=.pylintrc $(git ls-files '*.py') to see what lint errors are found in their python code before uploading.

I see the code at 5.68/10.0 now so I set the minimum score as 5.0/10.0 to get it working:
[07/15 update]: python code is now at 9.10/10.0. Using --fail-under=8.0 for the pylint in the ci flow
pylint --rcfile=.pylintrc $(git ls-files '*.py') --fail-under=5.0

[done] In the future I would like to fix the majority of the python lint warnings to get above 8.0/10.0 or 9.0/10.0. We could raise the fail threshold to one of those values once the python files are that quality to make sure future commits meet that standard as well.

Validated simulating this task in the workflow (sub job under the CI task) with act using this command:
act -j pylint --container-architecture linux/amd64
And the workflow passed.

[HalosGhost]

Thank you for all the cleanup work; this looks like an excellent code quality assurance addition to the CI!

[HalosGhost]

@rockett-m note that CI is currently failing. Once it's passing, I think I'm ready to merge!

Also, I'm not sure we want to lint the python code against all python versions greater than 3.10 (if my comment about targeting python 3.10+ suggested that, my apologies for the confusion).

I only meant that we probably only needed to require that people have 3.10+ installed (rather than requiring 3.10 exactly).

[maurermi]

A couple of comments from me, I think this is improved quite a bit but just would like some clarity on some points

[rockett-m]

Addressed the suggestions here - will upload code with the fixes shortly. Only part still in the air is if we want to limit the method names to declare instance attributes. I vote in favor as it is best practice and we shouldn't need more than these few listed below:

# List of method names used to declare (i.e. assign) instance attributes.
defining-attr-methods=__init__,
                      __new__,
                      setUp,
                      asyncSetUp,
                      __post_init__

[rockett-m]

Added in fixes

Will need to make a new issue/PR to improve retrieving the root dir per conversation with @HalosGhost. Can make many scripts more robust from that especially if not cloned via git

[HalosGhost]

2 nits, one small-but-necessary change, and the rebase to handle the README updates from #277.

Note: as this PR now includes modifications to native-system-benchmark.sh, I need to do at least one deeper test to make sure local-testing remains fully-operational (note-to-self: shouldn't be a big deal since it should only affect the tx-sample processing at end-of-test).

[rockett-m]

Updated the code to spec and did a rebase to merge in the README.md changes

[HalosGhost]

T-ACK. This looks good to me. Adds support for linting python code both to the repo/scripts and leverages it in the CI/CD, and expends some effort into generally improving the quality of python code we have now.

I'm happy to merge if @maurermi agrees.

[maurermi]

There is one breaking change in contracts/package.json, otherwise this looks good to me.

If others have also tested this code and seen correct results (besides the change in package.json) I am comfortable with this being merged in.

[maurermi]

T-ACK. This looks good to me, revises some existing code for clarity and then manages defining an environment for python code in this repo. Further will help to clean up future python additions.