[MonoDevelop] Applying policies from the command line

Michael Hutchinson m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com
Wed Mar 20 02:23:55 UTC 2013 

Applications can be defined in any addin. They are loaded by
MonoDevelop.Core, but loaded from the addin system. The only reason
the "build" tool is in MonoDevelop.Core is that it makes sense to put
it in there instead of proliferating addins.

The MonoDevelop.CSharp dependency is not a problem either.
MonoDevelop.Ide has a code formatter service with an extension point
that and the C# addin plugs into. So you can use the code formatter
service and it'll work for any file type that has a formatter
registered by an addin.

You can see this in action in the file template system:
https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/blob/master/main/src/core/MonoDevelop.Ide/MonoDevelop.Ide.Templates/SingleFileDescriptionTemplate.cs#L267

So the tool can be in any addin (or even a new addin you could publish
on the addin build service) - and it would use DesktopService to look
up the file's mime type, use that to look up a formatter from the
CodeFormatterService, look up the named policy from the policy
service, and pass the policy and the file to the formatter.

On 17 March 2013 11:45, Mart Sõmermaa <mrts.pydev at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Michael!
>
> First, thanks for the policy system (I vaguely remember from somewhere that
> you are one of the authors?), it's really nice!
>
> Thanks for the pointers - however, creating something in the lines of
> BuildTool.cs in MonoDevelop.Core would create a circular dependency between
> Monodevelop.CSharpBinding.dll (MonoDevelop.CSharp.Formatting is needed from
> there) and MonoDevelop.Core.dll.
>
> Assuming that extension applications are loaded from MonoDevelop.Core.dll
> organizing code gets tricky. Can you advise here a bit (I would personally
> move
> all mdtool applications out to the Tools project and load them from a
> different DLL
> altogether, but that will be a large refactoring)?
>
> As for "format-file" instead of "applypolicy" - agreed, I will use
> "format-file"
> for now. My idea was to eventually apply the full scale of the policy system
> like name conventions, changelog integration, commit message style etc and I
> felt that "applypolicy" would be more appropriate in this case. But let's
> get
> started with just formatting C# files and see where we end up to.
>
> I will gladly prepare a pull request once we sort out the circular
> dependency :).
>
> Thanks and best,
> MS
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 3:10 AM, Michael Hutchinson
> <m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Nice, sounds useful. It would be great to see this in a pull request
>> so we can include it in MD :)
>>
>> The trick is to register an IApplication instead of trying to
>> initialize Mono.Addins directly, like this:
>>
>> https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/blob/master/main/src/core/MonoDevelop.Core/MonoDevelop.Core.addin.xml#L207
>>
>> https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/blob/master/main/src/core/MonoDevelop.Core/MonoDevelop.Projects/BuildTool.cs
>>
>> However, maybe a better name for the application would be
>> "format-file" instead of "applypolicy?"?
>>
>> On 24 February 2013 12:49, Mart Sõmermaa <mrts.pydev at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > After looking around a bit in code, the solution looks to be pleasantly
>> > simple
>> > (for the default policy):
>> >
>> > ---
>> >
>> > using Mono.Addins;
>> > using MonoDevelop.CSharp.Formatting;
>> > using MonoDevelop.Projects.Policies;
>> > using NUnit.Framework;
>> >
>> > namespace TestFormatter
>> > {
>> >   class MainClass
>> >   {
>> >     public static void Main (string[] args)
>> >     {
>> >       Mono.Addins.AddinManager.Initialize ();
>> >
>> >       var input = "class Test {}";
>> >
>> >       var formatter = new CSharpFormatter ();
>> >       // CSharpFormatter.MimeType is internal
>> >       var mimeTypeChain = new string[] { "text/x-csharp" };
>> >       var policies = PolicyService.DefaultPolicies;
>> >       var result = formatter.FormatText (policies, mimeTypeChain,
>> >                     input, 0, input.Length);
>> >
>> >       Assert.AreEqual (result, "class Test\n{\n}");
>> >
>> >     }
>> >   }
>> > }
>> >
>> > ---
>> >
>> > However, this results in
>> >
>> > ---
>> >
>> >  [ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION:
>> >  System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been
>> >  thrown by the target of an invocation. --->
>> >  System.TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by
>> >  the type initializer for
>> >  MonoDevelop.CSharp.Formatting.CSharpFormattingPolicy --->
>> >  System.InvalidOperationException: This PolicyContainer can't be
>> >  modified
>> >
>> > ---
>> >
>> > It's a bit hard to debug as the debugger does not catch the exception,
>> > so I
>> > didn't dig into it too deeply.
>> > Does anyone have any idea what's causing this from the first glance?
>> >
>> > But generally, wouldn't having `mdtool applypolicy -p Mono -r .` in the
>> > git
>> > pre-commit hook be
>> > really nice for cleaning up code automagically? I personally miss this a
>> > lot, MonoDevelop's
>> > policies are much more powerful than e.g. NArrange (although I've not
>> > used
>> > the latter).
>> >
>> > (See e.g. https://metacpan.org/module/Code::TidyAll::Git::Precommit ).
>> >
>> > As for general usefulness, there are a number of people who are looking
>> > for
>> > this:
>> >
>> >  *
>> >
>> > http://haacked.com/archive/2011/05/22/an-obsessive-compulsive-guide-to-source-code-formatting.aspx
>> >  *
>> >
>> > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30101/is-there-an-automatic-code-formatter-for-c
>> >
>> > And the issue has been raised in mono-devel list already back in 2008:
>> >
>> >  *
>> > http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-devel-list/2008-August/028863.html
>> >
>> > So, besides being useful for the wider world, I guess this would also
>> > help
>> > in keeping both Mono and Monodevelop code clean.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > MS
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 5:07 PM, Mart Sõmermaa <mrts.pydev at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello!
>> >>
>> >> Have there been any discussions around running the MonoDevelop policy
>> >> tool
>> >> from the command line?
>> >>
>> >> It is an excellent tool and a it would be nice to apply consistent code
>> >> formatting and
>> >> other policies  across a project automatically where not all people use
>> >> MonoDevelop
>> >> as the main developer UI.
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps something in the lines of
>> >>
>> >>   mdtool applypolicy file.cs # apply default policy to file.cs
>> >>
>> >>   mdtool applypolicy -r dir # recursively apply default policy to all
>> >> files in directory dir
>> >>
>> >>   mdtool applypolicy -f policyfile file.cs # apply policy from file
>> >> policyfile
>> >>
>> >>   mdtool applypolicy -p Mono file.cs # apply the stock or custom policy
>> >> labeled 'Mono'
>> >>
>> >> If not and someone cares to point me to the right direction (what
>> >> modules
>> >> to look into,
>> >> any concerns that you foresee etc) I might look into this myself.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks for the good work!
>> >>
>> >> Best,
>> >> Mart Sõmermaa
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Monodevelop-list mailing list
>> > Monodevelop-list at lists.ximian.com
>> > http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monodevelop-list
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Hutchinson
>> http://mjhutchinson.com
>
>



-- 
Michael Hutchinson
http://mjhutchinson.com

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