chore: remove unused functions in utils/core

[sebastianliebscher]

SUMMARY

This PR removes unused functions in utils/core.py

TESTING INSTRUCTIONS

• unit + integration tests / CI

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• Has associated issue:
• Required feature flags:
• Changes UI
• Includes DB Migration (follow approval process in SIP-59)
  • Migration is atomic, supports rollback & is backwards-compatible
  • Confirm DB migration upgrade and downgrade tested
  • Runtime estimates and downtime expectations provided
• Introduces new feature or API
• Removes existing feature or API

[rusackas]

Thanks for cleaning up the place!

[john-bodley]

LGTM after confirming that the functions were unused. I've kicked off a rerun of a failing CI job which seems unrelated to your change.

@sebastianliebscher my sense is there's likely a bunch of old unused Python code and would love to see it removed. I've tried out tools like Vulture in the past but sadly the accuracy was rather poor and even when setting the confidence level to 80% there are a number of false negatives, i.e., none of the unused functions you identified where detected:

$ vulture superset --min-confidence 80
superset/cli/native_filters.py:103: unused variable 'all_' (100% confidence)
superset/cli/native_filters.py:253: unused variable 'all_' (100% confidence)
superset/cli/native_filters.py:350: unused variable 'all_' (100% confidence)
superset/db_engine_specs/hive.py:54: unused import 'TFetchOrientation' (90% confidence)
superset/examples/data_loading.py:28: unused import 'load_multiformat_time_series' (90% confidence)
superset/examples/data_loading.py:29: unused import 'load_paris_iris_geojson' (90% confidence)
superset/examples/data_loading.py:30: unused import 'load_random_time_series_data' (90% confidence)
superset/extensions/metadb.py:198: unused variable 'fast' (100% confidence)
superset/migrations/env.py:87: unused variable 'revision' (100% confidence)
superset/utils/core.py:763: unused variable 'frame' (100% confidence)
superset/utils/core.py:763: unused variable 'signum' (100% confidence)
superset/utils/log.py:109: unused variable 'exc_tb' (100% confidence)
superset/utils/log.py:109: unused variable 'exc_type' (100% confidence)
superset/utils/log.py:109: unused variable 'exc_val' (100% confidence)
superset/views/database/views.py:50: unused import 'FileStorage' (90% confidence)

[sebastianliebscher]

@john-bodley thanks for pointing out the tool, I didn't know about it before. After trying it out, I agree with you about the poor accuracy and false positives. Even at 100% confidence level (which could possibly be used in a CI pipeline) it is unfortunately not very helpful IMO.