How to make ocamlformat use .ocamlformat file from a specific directory?

[utkarshkukreti]

Context

I wrote the initial ocamlformat <-> atom-beautify integration a while back. I'm trying to make it support reading .ocamlformat config from the project folder.

Problem

atom-beautify (with beautify on save mode) formats the file before it's saved to disk. The implementation above saves the contents of the file to a temporary file, calls ocamlformat binary on it, and then sends the output back to the editor before the file is saved. This method does not read the correct .ocamlformat file because the temporary file is not stored in the same directory as the original file.

Question

Is it possible to specify which directory to scan for the .ocamlformat file while specifying a different file as input?

I tried passing --root but it doesn't work because passing a root argument presumably enables --disable-outside-detected-project automatically:

$ ocamlformat --root=/path/to/original/file's/directory /tmp/a.ml
File "/tmp/a.ml":
Warning: Ocamlformat disabled because [--disable-outside-detected-project] was given and no project root was found
...

[jberdine]

Yes, using --name should work, see https://github.com/ocaml-ppx/ocamlformat/blob/master/ocamlformat-help.txt#L250 .

And thanks for the atom-beautify integration!

[utkarshkukreti]

Thanks, that worked great! I've added this change to my latest atom-beautify PR: Glavin001/atom-beautify#2257.

[jberdine]

@utkarshkukreti I failed to mention this before, but please feel free to send a PR with an addition to the README.md file that points to your atom-beautify integration.

[Wilfred]

I hit this issue today, and ended up using --name rather than --root. I'm struggling to find a use case for --root.