Skip to content

--generator: display a message when no documentation is available instead of silently producing no output #1410

@rodrigoprimo

Description

@rodrigoprimo

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Opening this issue following a private chat with @jrfnl around the time #687 was created. When --generator is used but none of the targeted sniffs has a documentation file, PHPCS produces no output at all on any of the three generators (Text, HTML, Markdown):

$ phpcs --standard=Squiz --sniffs=Squiz.Classes.ClassDeclaration --generator=Text

$

Without any feedback, users may think the command failed or that they used the CLI arguments incorrectly.

Describe the solution you'd like

PHPCS should display a message informing the user that no documentation is available for the requested sniff(s), instead of producing no output at all.

A few points worth discussing:

  • Whether the message should be written to STDOUT or to STDERR. I'm inclined to think it should go to STDERR to avoid polluting redirected output such as phpcs --generator=HTML > docs.html, but I can also see an argument for writing it to STDOUT, since this message is not strictly an error.

  • Whether this scenario should change the exit code. It currently returns 0.

  • Whether to print one summary line or one line per sniff without docs. The per-sniff variant is more informative but may be noisy for standards where many sniffs lack documentation.

  • I have read the Contribution Guidelines and this is not a support question.

  • I intend to create a pull request to implement this feature.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions