warning file-line format in Possible candidates

[ferdymercury]

Describe the bug
Not a bug.

Expected behavior
When doxygen detects several "possible candidates" when matching functions, it prints the file and line of the match in a format not in accordance to the LINE-FORMAT specified in the Doxyfile.

It would be nice if this could be harmonized, as it would help for parsing the output as well opening the files quickly at the right line via the command line. Something like:

Possible candidates:
  'ROOT::Experimental::REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const REveDigitSet &)' at /opt/root_src/graf3d/eve7/inc/ROOT/REveDigitSet.hxx:39
  'ROOT::Experimental::REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const char *n="REveDigitSet", const char *t="")' at /opt/root_src/graf3d/eve7/inc/ROOT/REveDigitSet.hxx:87

Screenshots

To Reproduce
streamer.zip

Version
1.9.4 (15dae50*)

Additional context
https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTCREATORBUG-26892

[albert-github]

This is an interesting idea.

The used format for warnings is:

WARN_FORMAT            = "$file:$line: $text"

and for

.../REveDigitSet.cxx:79: warning: no uniquely matching class member found for
  REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const char *n, const char *t)
Possible candidates:
  'ROOT::Experimental::REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const REveDigitSet &)' at line 39 of file .../REveDigitSet.hxx
  'ROOT::Experimental::REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const char *n="REveDigitSet", const char *t="")' at line 87 of file .../REveDigitSet.hxx

we have here the $text part:

warning: no uniquely matching class member found for
  REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const char *n, const char *t)
Possible candidates:
  'ROOT::Experimental::REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const REveDigitSet &)' at line 39 of file .../REveDigitSet.hxx
  'ROOT::Experimental::REveDigitSet::REveDigitSet(const char *n="REveDigitSet", const char *t="")' at line 87 of file .../REveDigitSet.hxx

The internals of the $text have nothing to do with the initial $file and $line, to accomplish something like it a special setting would be required to structure the $text part.

The specific part of the warning is generated by means of:

            warnMsg+="' at line "+QCString().setNum(md->getDefLine()) +
              " of file "+md->getDefFileName();

we would probably need something like $filename and $lineno that when present in the warnings format they are used and otherwise the "at line" / "of file" idea. The format could be something like:

WARN_FORMAT            = "$file:$line: $text $filename:$lineno"

[ferdymercury]

That sounds great, thanks for the reply. It would considerably improve the experience, as e.g. when using QtCreator, one would just click on the hyperlinked (parsed) possible candidates, saving the time of manually searching those.

Although I'd vote for the 'default' to be file:line rather than "at line / of".

For example, just typing in your command line:
"geany /opt/root_src/graf3d/eve7/inc/ROOT/REveDigitSet.hxx:39"

opens the file just at the right spot. You can even double click on the printed file:line warning, and it will be copied to your clipboard, and then you write "geany " and click on the middle mouse button to paste. I contrast, the "at line of" is harder to copy-paste.

[albert-github]

I can imagine that you would vote for the the file:line as default, but due to backward compatibility I think that we should the "at line" / "of file" as the default.

@doxygen what is your opinion about the proposal?

[albert-github]

In the end I opted for a little bit a different solution where just the "line/file" part of the specifying message is involved.
Unfortunately a new doxygen setting, WARN_LINE_FORMAT had to be introduced for this as I didn't see a consistent way of implementing this into the current WARN_FORMAT

I've just pushed a proposed patch, pull request #9149

[ferdymercury]

Sounds good, thanks for the patch!!

[ferdymercury]

Loosely related: #3089

[albert-github]

Code has been integrated in master on GitHub (please don't close the issue as this will be done at the moment of an official release).