Compatibility¶

What each file needs to run, and what changes between versions.

Requirements¶

check_palette.py runs on Python 3.8 when you copy the file. It does not when you install the package, because the package carries check_figure.py too and that needs 3.11. The requires-python floor for the distribution is 3.11.

CI runs the palette checker on Python 3.8, 3.9, 3.11, and 3.13 with no pip install at all. The test job runs against the current matplotlib and pins one row to matplotlib 3.8.4, so a break in either direction shows up.

Optional dependencies¶

SciPy is optional and changes only speed. check_overplotting uses a KD-tree when scipy imports, and an O(n²) numpy path when it does not. The verdict is the same either way.

suggest_fixes.py is optional. Without it, check_figure.py audits identically; you lose report(fig, suggest=True) and suggest(rows).

Type annotations¶

py.typed ships with the installed package, so your type checker sees the annotations on that route. It does not on the vendored route: those files are loose modules with no package for the marker to attach to, and PEP 561 reads every annotation in them as Any.

Import lines by version¶

Version 0.7.0 moved the modules into the figure_gate package. Through 0.6.0 the wheel put them at the top level of site-packages, which is why an older install uses the same line as a vendored copy.

To check which version you have:

uv pip show figure-gate      # or: conda list figure-gate

Version policy¶

The public API is every name without a leading underscore in check_figure.py, check_palette.py, and suggest_fixes.py.

Below 1.0, a minor release may break that API. Version 0.7.0 broke the install path's import line. Every break is named in the changelog under its release heading.

Two things about the contract:

• The number of rows is not part of it. Gates get added: check_banking arrived after 0.6.0 and moved the count.
• The shape is part of it. audit returns (ok, rows), each row a (name, status, detail) triple whose status is True, False, or "warn". check returns the same shape.

On every pull request, CI compares the public API against the last tag and fails a build whose changelog does not name what moved. What the API promises has the detail.

Other plotting libraries¶

The checks in check_figure.py are matplotlib-specific, because they read a matplotlib Figure. The rules they enforce are not. The figure style guide writes up each rule independently of any library, so you can apply them by hand or port the checks. Each one reads geometry that any plotting library can report.

check_palette.py has no such limit. It takes hex strings, so any toolchain can call it.