Sorts top-level functions and class methods in Python files according to the step-down rule, as described in Robert C. Martin's Clean Code. More concretely, functions and methods are ordered in a depth-first-traversal order of the dependency tree, so higher-level code appears before lower-level code.

pip install sdsort

Or run directly with uv:

uvx sdsort <path>

To target individual files, run the sdsort command, followed by the paths to the files that should be sorted:

sdsort <file_1> <file_2>

To sort all *.py files in a directory, and all of its subdirectories, run the sdsort command followed by the directory path:

sdsort <directory_path>

To check if files are already sorted without modifying them, use the --check flag:

sdsort --check <file_or_directory>

This will exit with code 1 if any files would be re-arranged, making it suitable for CI pipelines and pre-commit hooks.

To prevent sdsort from modifying a particular file, add a # sdsort: skip_file comment somewhere within the file.

sdsort can be used as a pre-commit hook. Add the following to your .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/eirikurt/sdsort
    rev: v1.1.0
    hooks:
      - id: sdsort

It's early days. Consider this a beta for now.