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How to run google-java-format from Bazel?

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#917 9 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
java
Domain
build-system

Research direction

Begin with the Bazel and pre-commit context in the issue, then inspect google-java-format's Main#format(String... args) and the proposed GoogleJavaFormatTest. Done would be a documented, reproducible Bazel workflow that runs the formatter on changed Java files and defines the expected build behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

I would like to run google-java-format in an (open source) project which uses Bazel as build system.

I currently have it set up using https://github.com/dustinsand/pre-commit-jvm (with https://pre-commit.com) but it strikes me as "odd" having to install https://get-coursier.io and relying on dustinsand/pre-commit-jvm when it should be possible to "just" have a (Maven) dependency on this in Bazel and "run it" - I'm just not entirely sure HOW one would be run a Java based tool like this one from Bazel...

... I have briefly explored something like what this post on bazel-discuss may have been after, and started to write my own GoogleJavaFormatTest using this project's API, but it doesn't seem to be intended to used like that (UsageException is package local only, even though Main#format(String... args) throws UsageException) - and integrated this as a b test //... is perhaps that's the wrong way to go about this anyway?

How would one best run google-java-format from Bazel? You would want it "run whenever any *.java changed", and one would want it to fail the build if the formatting was wrong - but re-write (correct) the source files. Is this possible with Bazel? How does one even "run a main() method from a dependency" for something like this?

@cushon perhaps you have some wise guidance?

Dominant language
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Getting set up

First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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