Consider switching ruff formatter in lieu of black formatter

[juliasilge]

We currently bundle the Black formatter:

positron/product.json

Line 181 in bd2d2d3

"name": "ms-python.black-formatter",

Let's consider switching out this Python formatter for the ruff formatter, which is very similar in terms of functionality but more performant:

https://open-vsx.org/extension/charliermarsh/ruff

[melissa-barca]

@juliasilge we haven't had to consider the impact of removing a bootstrap extension yet. In this scenario, users who install the latest Positron will be provided with Ruff but may still have an install of Black installed by a previous version of Positron.
I can see arguments for both leaving that install (bootstrap extensions are ultimately up to user control, they may want to continue using Black, we shouldn't be uninstalling things from their home directory) and uninstalling it (we installed it initially, the user may not know anything about why it exists and does having both extensions enabled and installed at once cause strange behavior?)
If we leave the install, we should consider including some log messages about the change or specifying the change and our recommendation in release notes.

[juliasilge]

In this case, I don't think we would want to leave the user in a situation where they have both the black and ruff formatters installed and turned on: https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/faq/#how-does-ruffs-formatter-compare-to-black

I definitely see your point about it being weird/bad to uninstall things for the user in the general case, but I do think in this specific situation, leaving them with both would be worse.

If we did write code that uninstalled the black formatter, we would only want it to run one time, when they get the new version of Positron that provides ruff. In the future, if they have the black extension installed, that would mean that they installed it and we wouldn't want to mess with it.

[juliasilge]

I got more info on this from @seeM and @isabelizimm and they think we should not bother with uninstalling black. It is true that our existing users will end up with both (which is not ideal), but we don't expect it to have results that are too bad.

If we leave the install, we should consider including some log messages about the change or specifying the change and our recommendation in release notes.

Let's go with this approach to help folks!