Running custom_lint on a single file

[literalEval]

Thanks for this awesome plugin. I recently integrated in my org's project and the custom lint is working like charm. Uses quite some memory but that's a different issue.
I wanted to ask is there any way to lint a single file ? Like from command line ?

Describe what scenario you think is uncovered by the existing examples/articles

Currently, following the documentation, I am able to run flutter pub run custom_lint in the project root and it scans all the files of the project. I couldn't find any documentation which states how to lint a single file from command line.

Additional context
We are working on a team project in an org and want to add Documentation compliance for new files. As all the existing files can't be documented at once, we want that any new PR should include complete documentation for the changed files.
If it was possible to run custom_lint on a single file, then this task could easily be integrated to GitHub workflow of our project.

[rrousselGit]

There's no such thing yet. It could be added though

[literalEval]

Thanks for clarifying @rrousselGit . If I submit a PR that adds this features, will it be merged ?

[rrousselGit]

If it's tested, sure

[literalEval]

Cool

[literalEval]

@rrousselGit I looked at the codebase a bit and realized that It is tightly made to work only on whole packages. I also tried running Dart's official linter and the main difference is that the latter runs the linter on a single file basis unlike custom_lint.
I couldn't find anything in the code which shows place to change the 'package centric' architecture of custom_lint. Am I correct ? If no, can you please guide me about where to look in the codebase to implement this feature ?

For now, I propose a solution that doesn't break this plugin's architecture, while allowing the user to take only as much information as they need.

1. Extending the options list to accept files.

2. When getting response from the server, only store information about the files which are in the files list (files can be stored in a Hash Map to optimize this retrieval time) and neglect all the other information. Something like

What do you think ? Please make suggestions so that I can improve on my idea. Thanks.

[rrousselGit]

I don't think this belongs in the options object. I don't it makes sense either to analyze everything but only show the output of a few files

To implement this there's probably two sides:

• On custom_lint's side, you can change the logic related to searching "context roots" in the /bin file
• you can also have custom_lint pass the file args to custom_lint_builder (cf other params like watchMode & includeBuiltIntLints)
• on custom_lint_builder's side, you could change the analyzeFile function to do nothing if a file is not within the option arg

[literalEval]

Hmm. Correct.

I did find analyzeFile in the custom_lint_builder.dart and I understand how to not analyze a file by simply returning from there. But can you please explain in some detail on how to send this fileList data from custom_lint to custom_lint_builder ? I can implement everything from there on. Thanks for your support and time.

[rrousselGit]

Search for runSocket and look at how watchMode is passed around from the CLI to custom_lint_builder

[literalEval]

Thanks. I figured it out and implemented this feature. The changes are -

1. Users can now enter a list of comma separated file paths which are files from the package they are in.
2. The client will check whether the user has used this files flag or not and send the files data to the server accordingly.
3. If fileList is null, then all files will be parsed, otherwise only the files given through --files will be parsed.

If this looked good to you @rrousselGit , I will open the respective PR.

Below are the attached images of working of this feature -

Without files flag

With files flag

[rrousselGit]

Rather than -f it should probably be custom_lint vs custom_lint file/path another/path

[rrousselGit]

Make sure folders are supported too :)

[literalEval]

@rrousselGit

1. About the flag, I believe that can be done using taking the rest arguments. But then it will interfere with the
   2.argument being a directory or a file. If we strictly separate with flags, then a clear distinction will be made.
2. Do you mean that given a specific folder of the package, like say lib/constants, then custom_lint scan everything inside lib/constants ? If so, how about I implement it like - Pass dirList same as fileList and then append the path of files it contains to fileList in the server side.

Also, how about I open a PR with the work done till now, and if you find it workable, I'll add the directory function too. I was just thinking if I change a lot of stuff and you find something problematic, then I'll have to change everything again :)

[rrousselGit]

About the flag, I believe that can be done using taking the rest arguments. But then it will interfere with the
2.argument being a directory or a file. If we strictly separate with flags, then a clear distinction will be made.

I don't agree.
It's up to your implementation to check whether the path points to a file or a folder. That's how most commands works.

I don't think having a -f/-d makes sense here.

[rrousselGit]

Do you mean that given a specific folder of the package, like say lib/constants, then custom_lint scan everything inside lib/constants

Yes

But it shouldn't need a specific flag for this.

[literalEval]

Okay @rrousselGit . I'll modify the PR real quick :)

[rrousselGit]

Use dart test as example

You can do dart test, dart test test/my_test.dart or dart test test/folder and all of these work.

You can mix and match them too: dart test test/my_test.dart test/folder

[literalEval]

@rrousselGit please look at #82 now.

[literalEval]

@rrousselGit can we discuss its implementation once again please?

[rrousselGit]

Oh, sorry for the delay. Sure!

[rrousselGit]

In the meantime as you might've seen, I made a bunch of refactoring to better handle project parsing.

There's now a CustomLintWorkspace class for decoding a directory. And you can call CustomLintWorkspace.fromPaths to decode a workspace from a list of file/directory paths.

This should take care of half the job (anything inside custom_lint). The other half of the job is in custom_lint_builder to not analyze files that aren't in this list of paths. I believe you've done that before already

[literalEval]

@rrousselGit my earlier implementation was to just return out of the file analysis function, if the file path does not exist in the list of paths we are expecting. Does this solution still look good to you ?

[rrousselGit]

Yes that's fine

[literalEval]

That's great :)