How to make RuboCop inspect a file in a folder that starts with dot

[zeljkofilipin]

I want to run RuboCop for VisualEditor repository. At the moment, the only Ruby file I could find in the repository is .docs/CustomTags.rb.

$ find . | grep rb
./.docs/CustomTags.rb

If I run only rubocop, it does not find any files:

$ rubocop
Inspecting 0 files
0 files inspected, no offenses detected

I guess it ignores files in folders that start with dot (.docs).

RuboCop documentation on including files says:

If you'd like it to check other files you'll need to manually pass
them in, or to add entries for them under AllCops/Include.

If I provide path to the file from the command line, RuboCop finds the file:

$ rubocop .docs/CustomTags.rb 
Inspecting 1 file
W
(...)
1 file inspected, 26 offenses detected

Our continuous integration just runs rubocop for the repository, so I can not provide path to the file from the command line. I have to use AllCops/Include, but I can not figure out how to do it.

If I create a .rubocop.yml in the root of the repository:

AllCops:
  Include:
    - '.docs/CustomTags.rb'

and run Rubocop, it does not find the file:

$ rubocop
Inspecting 0 files
0 files inspected, no offenses detected

I have tried several variations of the .rubocop.yml file, including:

AllCops:
  Include:
    - '**/CustomTags.rb'

and

AllCops:
  Include:
    - '.docs/**/*'

But none of them are finding the file.

[zeljkofilipin]

Also asked the question here: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26508803/17469

[jonas054]

I think that the patterns '.docs/CustomTags.rb' and '.docs/**/*' ought to find the file. They don't and that's a bug IMO. The pattern '**/CustomTags.rb', on the other hand, will not and that's consistent with how Ruby's Dir[pattern] works.

[zeljkofilipin]

Is there a reason for RuboCop to ignore files in folders that start with dot, like .docs? I could not find it documented anywhere.

[jonas054]

You could argue that it's more of an accident (depending, as it does, on what Dir["#{base_dir}/**/*"] returns), but at the same time, I do think that there are cases when staying out of the hidden directories is the right thing to do.

Directories given explicitly either on the command line or in configuration files should be searched. Currently, RuboCop only searches the directories given on the command line. Hidden files and directories should be skipped by default.

So I think this needs fixing, and we should also add something in the README about hidden files.

[hashar]

From an email I wrote about this issue: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/qa/2014-October/002030.html

Rubocop traverses the tree hierarchy using:

Dir["somepath/**/*"]

Which is the equivalent of:

Dir.glob( "somepath/**/*", 0 )

0 is the flag parameter which can be made File::FNM_DOTMATCH to match dotfiles (including '.' and '..'. So the Dir[] needs to be rewritten to something like:

Dir.glob("somepath/**/*", File::FNM_DOTMATCH)

And add additional logic to skip '.' and '..'.

Related code is target_files_in_dir method: https://github.com/bbatsov/rubocop/blob/master/lib/rubocop/target_finder.rb#L58

The actual filtering via Include/Exclude, happens AFTER the tree traversal (by invoking file_to_include?(file). So whatever you put in the config file, it is never going to find dotfiles.

[jonas054]

@hashar You're quite right. I've been working on a solution, but got side-tracked for a while. Now I think I'll have something ready pretty soon, and it will follow the solution you outlined. Pretty much.

[zeljkofilipin]

Thanks! :)