Ale: Autofix support? (Javascript here, ESLint)

[tunnckoCore]

Hi there! First of all, i'm new to Vim, so sorry me in advance :D

I'm curious is there a way to automatically fix the errors the some linters gives you? For example, I'm Nodejs dev and I'm using ESLint, so.. is it possible to use the ESLint's --fix flag somehow? It's probably not a job of this (ALE) plugin, but using totally different plugin (like Neoformat) or Vim internal things, sounds like too much to me.

Also I just noticed that if I use Neoformat for example it seems it is synchronous, so it's blocking the whole work, until "fixable" errors are fixed. And no to mention that the file is pretty small ~100lines and it's shocking that is so slow.

If it isn't possible with ALE, what you suggest?

[w0rp]

_This_ plugin won't support fixing any problems, but I will eventually write a separate plugin that does.

[w0rp]

Actually, I'm going to need a lot of the same code to do the same things any way. I might as well just make fixing problems part of the same project.

[tunnckoCore]

Yea, I was thinking the same think if it is possible. Glance look over the codebase and seems it is, yea.

Thanks for the fast response in any way! It would be great feature here, or even if in another plugin anyway

[tunnckoCore]

@w0rp ping me at twitter (again @tunnckoCore) or somewhere here at github, please. No matter such feature is added to this plugin or totally another plugin is created. :)

[sassanh]

@w0rp I think it would be great to allow the user to set an option so that ale autofixes issues on save only. I guess autofixing on save doesn't break anything and it's required for ale so that it can be a replacement for neomake.

[w0rp]

@sassanh Hold that thought for a few hours.

[w0rp]

@tunnckoCore Okay. I have been working on adding the ability to fix files with asynchronous jobs off and on for a few days, and I just merged it into master. Check out :help ale-fix for detailed information. I added eslint --fix and autopep8 for now, plus one function for removing blank lines at the end of files.

You can configure it like so:

let g:ale_fixers.javascript = [
\ 'eslint',
\ 'remove_trailing_lines',
\ {buffer, lines -> filter(lines, 'v:val !=~ ''^\s*//''')},
\]

The above will configure ALEFix for JavaScript so it runs eslint --fix with the usual node_modules detection and so on, run a function to remove trailing blank lines, and the lambda example above will remove all line comments. (It's the easiest example I can think of.)

ALEFix is kind of the inverse of ALELint, in that it fixes files, it's only invoked manually, and no tools are configured to be run by default. You have to choose how you want to fix your files.

[wavded]

Hey @w0rp, thanks for working on this, it seems like it will replace fixmyjs.vim for me. Pulling master and using it with neovim and a global eslint install, it doesn't appear to be working for me. Here is my config:

let g:ale_fixers = {}
let g:ale_fixers.javascript = ['eslint']

Then I'm running it on a fixable file with :ALEFix but nothing is happening. Am I doing something wrong?

[w0rp]

@wavded Can you provide an example eslint configuration and some lines you're trying to fix?

[tunnckoCore]

@wavded i believe you should not add let g:ale_fixers = {}, but not sure, since i'm new to vim(script)

[tunnckoCore]

@w0rp that's amazing!! i'll try it when i can! Thanks for the great work. :clap: :beers:

[sassanh]

@w0rp
I think in this line https://github.com/w0rp/ale/blob/master/autoload/ale/handlers/eslint.vim#L31 it should be .eslintrc not .eslintrc.js: http://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/configuring

[w0rp]

Ah, I need to add a few more possible filenames in there. The configuration file can have many names.

[w0rp]

https://github.com/w0rp/ale/commit/3532257a1ac5be9896dd1d8b4a8ed75c77528946 Okay try again.

[sassanh]

Thanks.

[tunnckoCore]

Ah, I need to add a few more possible filenames in there.

@w0rp hahahah, yep, that was that i seen before and what i was searching last few minutes & secs: _"daaamn i know there was only one thing... hm"_ ;d

Btw, is it possible to implement "run fixers on save" or such? Through option (variable or whatever it is called in vim world), like it is for the linting let g:ale_lint_on_save.

Or if you don't want to implement it, can it be easy fix? So i can add it manually?

[sassanh]

@tunnckoCore you can add this to your vimrc/init.vim:

autocmd BufWritePost *.js,*.jsx,*.py ALEFix

[tunnckoCore]

Oh yea, forgot that.

Actually the whole code and vimscript is pretty easy to understand so i implemented few things. I can PR when get some time. :)

[w0rp]

I don't think I'd recommend fixing files automatically on save. I suppose you could modify a file _after_ saving it, but fixing files should be _mostly_ non-blocking, so it can't happen before a file is saved.

What we could do is save a file, trigger fixes, writefile(), maybe set nomodified, and reload the buffer. That would work. That might be the only way for some future tools to run. Plus, it might be possible to do all of that from another buffer.

[w0rp]

Plus, it might be possible to do all of that from another buffer.

I mention that because it's not possible to setline() from another buffer in Vim, so ALE either sets the lines immediately if the buffer is still open, or waits for the buffer to be shown again and _then_ calls setline().

[tunnckoCore]

I don't think I'd recommend fixing files automatically on save. I suppose you could modify a file after saving it, but fixing files should be mostly non-blocking, so it can't happen before a file is saved.

1. Why not recommending it?
2. It works, it feels a lot better than the other similar things (neoformat for example). Don't know if it not work correctly if the file is opened and modified from multiple places. In any way, that's not my case, so it work for me.

I implemented 3) Prettier ESLint and it works and feels fantastic. 4) And also :

let g:ale_fix_on_save
let g:ale_fix_on_enter
let g:ale_fix_on_insert_leave
let g:ale_fix_on_text_changed

_copy pasted from the ale_lint_*_

Do you want separate PRs for 3 and 4?

[wavded]

@w0rp sorry for the delay, whatever you did fixed it for me, I was using .eslintrc if that made a difference.

[w0rp]

For fixing files automatically after saving them, we need to write the changes to the file again, probably using writefile(), and deal with reloading the buffer. Then it will work. We also need to consider what happens when you use use :x or :wq.

[w0rp]

One option that might work for saving and closing files is remembering the filename when fixing starts, and writing to that file after fixing ends, if and only if fixing is being done for the "save" event.

[joeybaker]

@w0rp Would it be possible to have the fixer look for eslint_d?

[w0rp]

Possibly. For now, you can set the executable path for that with the options.

[joeybaker]

@w0rp Sorry, just making sure I understand: You're talking about this option: let g:ale_javascript_eslint_executable = 'eslint_d' not let g:ale_fixers.javascript correct?

[sassanh]

@joeybaker yeah, I'm using eslind.d with:

let g:ale_javascript_eslint_executable='eslint_d'

eslint_d is in the PATH.

[w0rp]

@joeybaker Yes, g:ale_javascript_eslint_executable.

[joeybaker]

@w0rp thanks. Any chance autoFixing isn't reading that correctly? I'm suspicious because when I call eslint_d manually, fixes are super fast, but ALEFix is noticeably slower.

[sassanh]

@joeybaker When I set g:ale_javascript_eslint_executable to an invalid string ALEFix doesn't raise an error but it doesn't fix anything at all. So if it's fixing it's running eslint_d. Why it runs slowly with ALEFix for you is still questionable. It runs fast on my machine.

[joeybaker]

@sassanh thanks! I'll dig around a bit more.

[w0rp]

Look at the output of :ALEInfo and see :help g:ale_javascript_eslint_use_global

[joeybaker]

@w0rp Thanks! I overlooked the need for g:ale_javascript_eslint_use_global that did the trick!

[w0rp]

@joeybaker I just pushed a commit which will now detect eslint_d automatically in node_modules when available, so you should now be able to install eslint_d locally, and it will be detected without any options being set.

[joeybaker]

Many thanks @w0rp!

[w0rp]

I'll close this issue, as basic support is there now.

[adamyonk]

Could this be expanded to support prettier directly (instead of going through prettier-eslint), or is it already possible to configure that way?

[w0rp]

@adamyonk Both are now supported on master. They are suggested by :ALEFixSuggest.

[adamyonk]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Here's the config I used to get it working, in case it's helpful to anyone else:

let g:ale_fixers = { 'javascript': ['prettier'] }
let g:ale_javascript_prettier_options = '--no-semi --trailing-comma es5'

[w0rp]

I'm just waiting until the prettier guy realises that "zero configuration" is a pipe dream, and adds configuration file support for prettier.

[adamyonk]

It really is crazy that it's made it this far without it. It sure makes getting a whole team to use the same settings more difficult than it could be. 😐

[tunnckoCore]

"zero configuration"

It is, zero configuration. The problem is that community has different opinions :D

[adamyonk]

Another quick question about fixers: Using BufWritePre to ALEFix results in a file that is dirty after the save, what do you all use to get around that?

[w0rp]

See :help g:ale_fix_on_save. Fixing files on save requires some care, so ALE can handle that for you.

[w0rp]

Cool, that's probably a good way to configure it. I might use that myself.

[sassanh]

What's the good way to configure it?

[w0rp]

Huh, the guy deleted his comment. I'll show you a shortened version of what he originally included here.

" Fix JavaScript code with ESlint
let g:ale_fixers = {}
let g:ale_fixers.javascript = ['eslint']

# ESlint config as YAML
# Use prettier as a plugin for eslint, and set up options for it here.
plugins:
  - prettier
rules:
  prettier/prettier:
    - error
    - singleQuote: true
      trailingComma: all

[sharils]

Thanks for reposting it, after my post, strange things happened and I thought it didn't work and also because I just saw that prettier has an RFC for config files. So I deleted it. Again thanks a lot for reposting it. :+1:

[w0rp]

Sure, no problem.

[l5x]

@w0rp just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work!