| Index: packages/dart_style/README.md
|
| diff --git a/packages/dart_style/README.md b/packages/dart_style/README.md
|
| new file mode 100644
|
| index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3a7ed962fe55c519dab934e5f7e50bb60f242414
|
| --- /dev/null
|
| +++ b/packages/dart_style/README.md
|
| @@ -0,0 +1,289 @@
|
| +The dart_style package defines an automatic, opinionated formatter for Dart
|
| +code. It replaces the whitespace in your program with what it deems to be the
|
| +best formatting for it. Resulting code should following the [Dart style guide][]
|
| +but, moreso, should look nice to most human readers, most of the time.
|
| +
|
| +[dart style guide]: https://www.dartlang.org/articles/style-guide/
|
| +
|
| +It handles indentation, inline whitespace and (by far the most difficult),
|
| +intelligent line wrapping. It has no problems with nested collections, function
|
| +expressions, long argument lists, or otherwise tricky code.
|
| +
|
| +## Usage
|
| +
|
| +The package exposes a simple command-line wrapper around the core formatting
|
| +library. The easiest way to invoke it is to [globally activate][] the package
|
| +and let pub put its executable on your path:
|
| +
|
| + $ pub global activate dart_style
|
| + $ dartfmt ...
|
| +
|
| +[globally activate]: https://www.dartlang.org/tools/pub/cmd/pub-global.html
|
| +
|
| +If you don't want `dartformat` on your path, you can run it explicitly:
|
| +
|
| + $ pub global activate dart_style --no-executables
|
| + $ pub global run dart_style:format ...
|
| +
|
| +The formatter takes a list of paths, which can point to directories or files.
|
| +If the path is a directory, it processes every `.dart` file in that directory
|
| +or any of its subdirectories.
|
| +
|
| +By default, it formats each file and just prints the resulting code to stdout.
|
| +If you pass `-w`, it will instead overwrite your existing files with the
|
| +formatted results.
|
| +
|
| +You may pass a `--line-length` option to control the width of the page that it
|
| +wraps lines to fit within, but you're strongly encouraged to keep the default
|
| +line length of 80 columns.
|
| +
|
| +### Validating files
|
| +
|
| +If you want to use the formatter in something like a [presubmit script][] or
|
| +[commit hook][], you can use the `--dry-run` option. If you pass that, the
|
| +formatter prints the paths of the files whose contents would change if the
|
| +formatter were run normally. If it prints no output, then everything is already
|
| +correctly formatted.
|
| +
|
| +[presubmit script]: http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/depottools/presubmit-scripts
|
| +[commit hook]: http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks
|
| +
|
| +### Using it programmatically
|
| +
|
| +The package also exposes a single dart_style library containing a programmatic
|
| +API for formatting code. Simple usage looks like this:
|
| +
|
| + import 'package:dart_style/dart_style.dart';
|
| +
|
| + main() {
|
| + var formatter = new DartFormatter();
|
| +
|
| + try {
|
| + print(formatter.format("""
|
| + library an_entire_compilation_unit;
|
| +
|
| + class SomeClass {}
|
| + """));
|
| +
|
| + print(formatter.formatStatement("aSingle(statement);"));
|
| + } on FormatterException catch (ex) {
|
| + print(ex);
|
| + }
|
| + }
|
| +
|
| +## FAQ
|
| +
|
| +### Why have a formatter?
|
| +
|
| +The has a few goals, in order of descending priority:
|
| +
|
| +1. **Produce consistently formatted code.** Consistent style improves
|
| + readability because you aren't distracted by variance in style between
|
| + different parts of a program. It makes it easier to contribute to others'
|
| + code because their style will already be familiar to you.
|
| +
|
| +2. **End debates about style issues in code reviews.** This consumes an
|
| + astonishingly large quantity of very valuable engineering energy. Style
|
| + debates are time-consuming, upset people, and rarely change anyone's mind.
|
| + They make code reviews take longer and be more acromonious.
|
| +
|
| +3. **Free users from having to think about and apply formatting.** When
|
| + writing code, you don't have to try to figure out the best way to split a
|
| + line and then pain-stakingly add in the line breaks. When you do a global
|
| + refactor that changes the length of some identifier, you don't have to go
|
| + back and rewrap all of the lines. When you're in the zone, you can just
|
| + pump out code and let the formatter tidy it up for you as you go.
|
| +
|
| +4. **Produce beautiful, readable output that helps users understand the code.**
|
| + We could solve all of the above goals with a formatter that just removed
|
| + *all* whitespace, but that wouldn't be very human-friendly. So, finally,
|
| + the formatter tries very hard to produce output that is not just consistent
|
| + but readable to a human. It tries to use indentation and line breaks to
|
| + highlight the structure and organization of the code.
|
| +
|
| + In several cases, the formatter has pointed out bugs where the existing
|
| + indentation was misleading and didn't represent what the code actually did.
|
| + For example, automated formatted would have helped make Apple's
|
| + ["gotofail"][gotofail] security bug easier to notice:
|
| +
|
| + ```c
|
| + if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &signedParams)) != 0)
|
| + goto fail;
|
| + goto fail;
|
| + if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.final(&hashCtx, &hashOut)) != 0)
|
| + goto fail;
|
| + ```
|
| +
|
| + The formatter would change this to:
|
| +
|
| + ```c
|
| + if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &signedParams)) != 0)
|
| + goto fail;
|
| + goto fail; // <-- not clearly not under the "if".
|
| + if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.final(&hashCtx, &hashOut)) != 0)
|
| + goto fail;
|
| + ```
|
| +
|
| +[gotofail]: https://gotofail.com/
|
| +
|
| +### I don't like the output!
|
| +
|
| +First of all, that's not a question. But, yes, sometimes you may dislike the
|
| +output of the formatter. This may be a bug or it may be a deliberate stylistic
|
| +choice of the formatter that you disagree with. The simplest way to find out is
|
| +to file an [issue][].
|
| +
|
| +[issue]: https://github.com/dart-lang/dart_style/issues
|
| +
|
| +Now that the formatter is fairly mature, it's more likely that the output is
|
| +deliberate. If your bug gets closed as "as designed", try not to be too sad.
|
| +Even if the formatter doesn't follow your personal preferences, what it *does*
|
| +do is spare you the effort of hand-formatting, and ensure your code is
|
| +*consistently* formatted. I hope you'll appreciate the real value in both of
|
| +those.
|
| +
|
| +### How stable is it?
|
| +
|
| +You can rely on the formatter to not break your code or change its semantics.
|
| +If it does do so, this is a critical bug and we'll fix it quickly.
|
| +
|
| +The rules the formatter uses to determine the "best" way to split a line may
|
| +change over time. We don't promise that code produced by the formatter today
|
| +will be identical to the same code run through a later version of the formatter.
|
| +We do hope that you'll like the output of the later version more.
|
| +
|
| +### Why can't I tell the formatter to ignore a region of code?
|
| +
|
| +Even a really sophisticated formatter can't beat a human in *all* cases. Our
|
| +semantic knowledge of the code can let us show more than the formatter can. One
|
| +escape hatch would be to have a comment telling the formatter "leave this
|
| +alone".
|
| +
|
| +This might help the fourth goal above, but does so at the expense of the first
|
| +three. We want code that is *consistent* and we want you to stop thinking about
|
| +formatting. If you can decide to turn off the formatter, now you have regions
|
| +of code that are inconsistent by design.
|
| +
|
| +Further, you're right back into debates about how the code in there should be
|
| +formatted, with the extra bonus of now debating whether or not that annotation
|
| +should be used and where. None of this is making your life better.
|
| +
|
| +Yes, *maybe* you can hand-format some things better than the formatter. (Though,
|
| +in most cases where users have asked for this, I've seen formatting errors in
|
| +the examples they provided!) But does doing that really add enough value to
|
| +make up for re-opening that can of worms?
|
| +
|
| +### Why does the formatter mess up my collection literals?
|
| +
|
| +Large collection literals are often used to define big chunks of structured
|
| +data, like:
|
| +
|
| +```dart
|
| +/// Maps ASCII character values to what kind of character they represent.
|
| +const characterTypes = const [
|
| + other, other, other, other, other, other, other, other,
|
| + other, white, white, other, other, white,
|
| + other, other, other, other, other, other, other, other,
|
| + other, other, other, other, other, other, other, other,
|
| + other, other, white,
|
| + punct, other, punct, punct, punct, punct, other,
|
| + brace, brace, punct, punct, comma, punct, punct, punct,
|
| + digit, digit, digit, digit, digit,
|
| + digit, digit, digit, digit, digit,
|
| + punct, punct, punct, punct, punct, punct, punct,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, brace, punct, brace, punct, alpha, other,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, brace, punct, brace, punct
|
| +];
|
| +```
|
| +
|
| +The formatter doesn't know those newlines are meaningful, so it wipes it out
|
| +to:
|
| +
|
| +```dart
|
| +/// Maps ASCII character values to what kind of character they represent.
|
| +const characterTypes = const [
|
| + other,
|
| + other,
|
| + other,
|
| +
|
| + // lots more ...
|
| +
|
| + punct,
|
| + brace,
|
| + punct
|
| +];
|
| +```
|
| +
|
| +In many cases, ignoring these newlines is a good thing. If you've removed a few
|
| +items from a list, it's a win for the formatter to repack it into one line if
|
| +it fits. But here it clearly loses useful information.
|
| +
|
| +Fortunately, in most cases, structured collections like this have comments
|
| +describing their structure:
|
| +
|
| +```dart
|
| +const characterTypes = const [
|
| + other, other, other, other, other, other, other, other,
|
| + other, white, white, other, other, white,
|
| + other, other, other, other, other, other, other, other,
|
| + other, other, other, other, other, other, other, other,
|
| + other, other, white,
|
| + punct, other, punct, punct, punct, punct, other, // !"#$%&ยด
|
| + brace, brace, punct, punct, comma, punct, punct, punct, // ()*+,-./
|
| + digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, // 01234
|
| + digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, // 56789
|
| + punct, punct, punct, punct, punct, punct, punct, // :;<=>?@
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, // ABCDEFGH
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, brace, punct, brace, punct, alpha, other, // YZ[\]^_'
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, // abcdefgh
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha,
|
| + alpha, alpha, brace, punct, brace, punct // yz{|}~
|
| +];
|
| +```
|
| +
|
| +In that case, the formatter is smart enough to recognize this and preserve your
|
| +original newlines. So, if you have a collection that you have carefully split
|
| +into lines, add at least one line comment somewhere inside it to get it to
|
| +preserve all of the newlines in it.
|
| +
|
| +### Why doesn't the formatter handle multi-line `if` statements better?
|
| +
|
| +If you have a statement like:
|
| +
|
| +```dart
|
| +if (someVeryLongConditional || anotherLongConditional) function(argument, argument);
|
| +```
|
| +
|
| +It will format it like:
|
| +
|
| +```dart
|
| +if (someVeryLongConditional || anotherLongConditional) function(
|
| + argument, argument);
|
| +```
|
| +
|
| +You might expect it to break before `function`. But the Dart style guide
|
| +explicitly forbids multi-line `if` statements that do not use `{}` bodies.
|
| +Given that, there's never a reason for the formatter to allow splitting after
|
| +the condition. This is true of other control flow statements too, of course.
|
| +
|
| +### Why doesn't the formatter add curlies or otherwise clean up code then?
|
| +
|
| +The formatter has a simple, restricted charter: it rewrites *only the
|
| +non-semantic whitespace of your program.* It makes absolutely no other changes
|
| +to your code.
|
| +
|
| +This helps keep the scope of the project limited. The set of "clean-ups" you
|
| +may want to do is unbounded and much fuzzier to define.
|
| +
|
| +It also makes it more reliable to run the formatter automatically in things
|
| +like presubmit scripts where a human may not be vetting the output. If the
|
| +formatter only touches whitespace, it's easier for a human to trust its output.
|
|
|