Add plugin functionality

[bhirsz]

We support multiple ways of importing user defined objects - rules, formatters, reports (in the future) and configs (via extends). We should add an option to register robocop plugin to simplify it.

For example, we can use metadata entrypoints:

[project]
name = "example-plugin"

[project.entry-points."robocop.plugins"]
example = "example_plugin.path.to.dir"

Robocop will automatically discover example plugin when you install example-plugin package. It will read the path where it points ("example_plugin.path.to.dir"). It could automatically discover rules, formatters, reports and configs.

We could then use config inheritance:

[tool.robocop]
extends = ["example.config.config_name"]

Which could contain references to custom objects:

[tool.robocop.lint]
custom-rules = ["example.rules"]

[tool.robocop.format]
select = [
    "example.formatters.FormatterA"
]

[AMorgaut]

Hi,

I'm working on the Creedengo Open Source project which aims to provide linter rules dedicated to sustainability. We already support many languages (Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript, ...) through Sonar plugins (available in the sonar marketplace) and an ESLint plugin

Few years ago I was using Robotframework Lint. We managed to export its result to sonar but it was really not optimal and it is not maintained anymore.

Looking to make Creedengo support the Robot language, I recently found this Robocop project and it seems, as of today to be the best fit to propose our custom rules:

• it officially support custom rules provided through a python file
• it provides a doculentatiion and support for SARIF and Sonar

It's nice but not yet really practical enough to distribute our rules, so:

• we started by initiating a test project to try your custom rule API and it seems to be promising (here the first PR: creedengo-robot-test-project/pull/5 )
• we then wanted to discuss with you about 2 options:
  1. once correctly tested, propose our custom rules in Pull Request to Robocop to be made available in Robocop (potentillay behind a specific tag)
  2. ask you for "plugin" support so we can push a plugin library easilly installable with pip

I'm no python expert but from what I found, this page looks to document the best prectices to provide library plugins
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/creating-and-discovering-plugins/

From what you described I'm not yet very confortable with example_plugin.path.to.dir. When I see plugins configurations in ESLint we do not need to specify a path. Paths can be tricky.

[AMorgaut]

Another point, I probably should push it in another ticket but it would be important for us to be able to provide some tags to our rules as we do for our other plugins.

Our rules :

• would automatically have the "creedengo" and "sustainability" tags
• may have library related tags when the rule apply to library specific APIs (BrowserLib, Selenium, ...) - It is common usage in Sonarqube to set tags when a rule apply to a framework (Springboot, Angular, ...) or a library (jquery, ...) API
• should also have tags to indicate on which hardware element issues have impact (CPU, memory, disk, network)

Those tags are usefull when we manage the issues from Sonar

They will also be very important for the Creedengo Dashboard we are about to publish

[AMorgaut]

For your Information, we have direct contacts with the Sonar Team who always participate to our yearly Green Code Challenge

They facilitate the publication of our sonar plugins to their marketplace with support regarding their quality check process.

I saw you contacted them to ask for the Robot Framework language support. I will try to promote this idea so robocop could be promoted via a sonar plugin, or maybe at least have a Robot framework related page in the sonarqube documentation mentionning Robocop and its support of sonar reports

[bhirsz]

You're right - we offert multiple integrations (like SonarQube directly). You can already write your own custom rules and use them with Robocop, but distribution may be tricky (you need to setup it correctly). The plugin functionality is aiming to streamline this experience.

As for path goes, every package installed in your Python environment is actually a copy of source directory (when deploying we specify what files to copy etc). So it's already handled internally by Python and may be different from how ESlint is doing it, but as long as we use built-in solutions it should work. I will however investigate it thoroughly.

BTW the link to your PR does not work - perhaps it's private repository?

We don't support tagging the rules (except the internal SonarQube tagging). You can either provide it in the rule documentation and extract it later:

class YourRule(Rule):
"""
Class string is used as rule docs.

Tags: extract, me, later
"""

Or even better write your own custom rule class - it should be enough to inherit from Robocop Rule class:

class CreedengoRule(Rule):
    base_tags: list[str] = ["creedengo", "sustainability"]
   tags: list[str]

   # some methods for getting tags etc

class YourRule(CreedengoRule):
    tags = ["selenium"]

But I'm open to ideas/new features so feel free to open separate issue for it.

[bhirsz]

For your Information, we have direct contacts with the Sonar Team who always participate to our yearly Green Code Challenge

They facilitate the publication of our sonar plugins to their marketplace with support regarding their quality check process.

I saw you contacted them to ask for the Robot Framework language support. I will try to promote this idea so robocop could be promoted via a sonar plugin, or maybe at least have a Robot framework related page in the sonarqube documentation mentionning Robocop and its support of sonar reports

Thanks, it would mean a lot! As a project we already are used in many companies, but since Robot Framework itself is not as popular as languages itself (Python, Javascript etc) we understably don't have the user base as big as some other linters. That makes it harder to discuss such integration supports

[bhirsz]

And regarding custom rules:

once correctly tested, propose our custom rules in Pull Request to Robocop to be made available in Robocop (potentillay behind a specific tag)

I'm open to PR, we can set the rules as not enabled by default and provide them under separate category. So it's possible to deploy those together with Robocop rules as well. As the bonus it will be easier to test with our internal test framework.