dart-code-metrics VS dart_style

While the benefits of using static analysis tools such as DCM are understandable, integrating them into an existing project can be challenging due to the many possible warnings that need attention.

In our previous article, we announced Dart Code Metrics, a static code analysis tool. Initially, its task was to collect and represent code metrics, as well as provide additional rules for the analyzer with a more flexible configuration. However, we decided to push it to the next level.

Dart Code Metrics is a static code analysis tool that allows you to collect code metrics and provide additional rules for the analyzer. The tool helps developers monitor the quality of code and improve it. In this article, we'd like to share the capabilities of Dart Code Metrics with the community. This tool helped us at Wrike, and we hope it'll help you, too.

You can also try our OSS Dart code metrics which is a static analysis tool that helps improve code quality. It analyzes code metrics and provides additional rules for dart analyzer. Can be used as a command line tool, analyzer plugin or library. https://github.com/wrike/dart-code-metrics

> Oh I'm curious why you're rewriting it?

The primary driver is that we're moving to a fairly different formatting style: https://github.com/dart-lang/dart_style/issues/1253

The formatter works sort of like a compiler in that it parses the code, translates it to an internal representation, does optimization on that IR, and then outputs final code. The main difference is that the "final code" is also source code, and the "optimization" is line splitting.

The old IR grew organically over time and got increasingly difficult to work with. It baked certain formatting choices directly into the IR (mainly indentation) which line splitting then had no control over. For example, given a function call like:

    someLongFunctionName(some + long + argument + expression, [firstElement, anotherElement, aThirdElement]);

in your analysis_options.yaml. The formatter doesn't understand the new syntax yet, though.

Sorry, perhaps im not quite familiar with the GitHub issues you’re chatting about, but a quick search shows the Dart team actually made a very similar argument about laptops and diffs as the first reply in a thread about the 80 character max: https://github.com/dart-lang/dart_style/issues/833

Nope, but there is a proposal to set line length in pubspec.yaml: https://github.com/dart-lang/dart_style/issues/918

The standard Dart extension only supports formatting using the SDK-supplied formatter (dart_style) which (by design) is not configurable (although it can be turned on/off with the dart.enableSdkFormatter setting).

Flutter itself provides formatting choices, however, it only formats Dart files and it doesn’t re-order the code. Flutter formats the code based on these formatting rules.

There are some other possibilities - such as complex code being slow to format (for example I hit https://github.com/dart-lang/dart_style/issues/1022 and originally thought it was a repro for this issue), or that the server is busy doing its initial synchronous scan of the workspace, though those should be temporary and the format should eventually complete so it's probably not what most people are reporting here.