Add --auto-correct cmdline option to gradle tasks

[evant]

This allows you to run ./gradlew detekt --auto-correct

I often find myself wanting to make this configurable particularly so that I can run it locally and not on ci. Also because auto-correct is a potentially destructive operation it's nice to have to be explicit to enable it on the cmdline instead of hard-coding it in the detekt task configuration. Having a standard option for this also makes it easier to autofix your code when working on various third-party projects using detekt.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #4202 (3784f4d) into main (b36fa7d) will not change coverage.
The diff coverage is n/a.

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  Coverage     84.22%   84.22%           
  Complexity     3258     3258           
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  Files           472      472           
  Lines         10309    10309           
  Branches       1820     1820           
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  Hits           8683     8683           
  Misses          666      666           
  Partials        960      960           

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[3flex]

This is a nice idea - but the same can be achieved by something like gradlew detekt -PdetektAutoCorrect=true

And then in the Gradle config:

val detektAutoCorrect: String? by project

tasks.withType<Detekt>().configureEach {
    autoCorrect = detektAutoCorrect.toBoolean()
}

It's a few more chars on the CLI but gets the same result.

I don't feel strongly about this though, but just thinking that if we add a CLI option for auto correct, then does it make sense to add it for other parameters. The Gradle plugin is fairly complicated for what it does, so it would be good to keep it simple where we can.

[evant]

Yeah I've basically had to add that on every project I've worked on using detekt, and if a project I'm contributing to doesn't have it I have to tweak the build file to run it. Was hoping to save some time and add discoverability by having it built in. Don't know of another param in the same situation, but I feel like that could always be a follow-up if some is desired.

[evant]

I think the thing sets auto-correct apart from other args is that it can modify your source so it really should be obvious when you are running with it imo. I'd argue that the gradle dsl shouldn't even have it, but I can live with keeping that param there.

[BraisGabin]

I think that we declined already some PRs similar to this one but

and if a project I'm contributing to doesn't have it I have to tweak the build file to run it.

this seems a very legit use case. Not in all the projects you have the control to decide how detekt is setup so this is probably a legit use case. And, because we had this request multiple times, it seems like a feature that "a lot/some" users want.

I'd argue that the gradle dsl shouldn't even have it

I agree with this. I don't think it should be in the dsl. I don't know if the best way would be a flag or a new task detektFormat similar to what https://github.com/JLLeitschuh/ktlint-gradle does.

We know that our current gradle plugin api is a mess and we need to reframe it completely for 2.0 (more about this here: #4190 (comment)) but I think that until then this is a very clean way to give support to this use case.

[chao2zhang]

Do we want to update docs?

[BraisGabin]

@evant can you update the documentation? I think that's the only thing missing for us to merge this.

[gmazzo]

Glad to see a change of ❤️ on this. I should provide better arguments time.