Prospector 1.16.1 is no longer ignoring my tests folder

[ryancausey]

I've started having CI failures with 1.16.1 as it now seems to be linting files under my tests folder where it did not before. I can't see any
default configuration that appeared to ignore the tests folder, and I didn't customize the configuration on my end, so I'm not sure why it was ignoring the tests folder before on older versions.

Did something change in the underlying tools to cause this?

[sbrunner]

Can you provide information to be able to reproduce it and the latest working version?

[ryancausey]

OK, so I traced this back to changing between 1.13.3 and 1.14.0. My suspicion is that it has to do with #707 and how pre-commit works. Pre-commit feeds changed file names directly into the hook, so the change in #707 would no longer ignore my test files because pre-commit is feeding them directly to prospector.

[sbrunner]

Yes, you're probably right, it was relay disturbing that we for prospector <a_file> and this file was not checked.
But effectively pre-commit will also do that, then we have tow basic solutions:

• Live with that and also add the ignored files in the pre-commit configuration
• Revert the comportment introduced by Don't filter manual selected file #707
  We also more complex solution by adding a new argument to Prospector.

@ryancausey @Pierre-Sassoulas @carlio what do you think?

[ryancausey]

I think this is a pre-commit configuration problem to solve, and that prospector is doing the right thing.

[carlio]

The idea was that which files to include or ignore was set in profiles, command-line flags like --ignore-patterns would then override the profile, and then passing in a filename directly would check the file regardless of the others. The idea being, if you say "check this" it won't ignore you due to other config.

The idea of running it in pre-commit wasn't present in the design of that.

I think if prospector is aware that it's running as a pre-commit hook, it could change its behaviour, however it sounds likes a problem of usage not the tool - an unfortunate side effect of how pre-commit works.

The only thing I'd say is that it's a bit counterintuitive for users, because they do not explicitly pass in the list of files, but rather pre-commit does, and so that behaviour is a bit strange to them.

In my ideal world, prospector using command-line positional arguments for paths but deprioritising them when in 'pre-commit' mode would make it nicer for users, but possibly would lead to additional confusion in other cases I haven't thought of. Basically - if we could make it easier to use as a pre-commit hook without requiring user configuration, I'm all for it, but I am not sure that all solutions in that direction would be problem-free.

Also this requires knowing that prospector is being run as a hook, which I imagine is possible but I am not sure.

[ryancausey]

I can explicitly set an exclude pattern on the pre-commit hook to ignore the files in the tests folder so this doesn't happen, so that's how I'm solving it for myself.