VS Code Python autopep8 does not honor 2 spaces hanging indentation

Question

I'm trying to get autopep8 work to properly indent Python code with 2 spaces instead of 4. I'm using VS Code with Python extension which uses autopep8 for formatting. I found here that autopep8 can be configured to use 2 spaces by

"python.formatting.autopep8Args": ["--indent-size=2"]

But it does not work for me.

My situation is like this. When I press enter, it correctly starts the next line with the same indentation as the previous line. Press enter after an open parenthesis, it correctly starts the new line with 2 more spaces. But when I paste or save (I have "editor.formatOnPaste" and "editor.formatOnSave" set to true), the annoying thing happened: all the 2-space indentation inside the parentheses became 4 (other 2-space indentation are unaffected). Why is it doing this and how can I make it 2 spaces everywhere?

====EDIT====

I found out that the pylint error Wrong hanging indentation (remove 2 spaces). [bad-continuation] Wrong hanging indentation (remove 2 spaces). [bad-continuation] . It's because my pylintrc has indent-after-paren=2 . I'm wondering if autopep8 or other Python formatter can set this property?

Answer 1

I also had to include this in my array in settings.json, similar to yours.

"--ignore E121"

According to https://pypi.org/project/autopep8/ , this setting ensures your indents are a multiple of 4. By not enforcing that, the configured tab size in VSCode is used.

E121 - Fix indentation to be a multiple of four.

That being said, your indentation is still "acceptable" according to pep8, so it actually will not change it to the 4 spaces you are expecting in your parens. I had to outdent mine one level, then when it ran again, it didn't change it.

Unfortunately this is actually just a workaround and it actually negatively affects other indention rules...

You can see in the code for pep8 that they hardcode the default tab size to be the "python way" (4 spaces) in:

https://github.com/hhatto/autopep8/blob/120537a051d7f3cbbb5c4ede19b9e515156bd3d1/autopep8.py#L104

That makes it look like the hanging indent is just not respecting the --indent-size option...

Answer 2

had the same issue, here is the solution:

1. Navigate to library directory of your environment
2. Open autopep8.py
3. Search for "DEFAULT_INDENT_SIZE" and change it to 2

Answer 3

Adding --indent-size=2 --ignore=E121 worked for me.