Add ruleset XML files to categorize and subset sniffs

[westonruter]

A lot of the sniffs are opinionated and may not be reflective of an actual problem. We should have a ruleset XML file that just contains the core sniffs for checking code formatting, and then another ruleset XML that has the extra sniffs (e.g. those labeled with extra in GitHub), perhaps including the other ruleset XML as a base or copying it somehow.

[westonruter]

@Rarst how's #64 for excluding extras?

[Rarst]

I am not entirely sure how to test it in my setup. I am using CS via PhpStorm and currently can only point it to folder, not to specific XML file.

[westonruter]

@Rarst Strange that PhpStorm doesn't allow you to specify arguments for phpcs. Here's an idea: what if you made a wrapper script which specified the --standard path to the ruleset desired and any additional arguments that PhpStorm is passing into the script? For example, if you had a phpcs-wp-core which contained:

#!/bin/bash
phpcs --standard=path/to/core/ruleset.xml $@

Maybe it would have to strip out any --standard coming from $@. Humm…

[Rarst]

I could probably include it in wrapper (and probably will to test later), just not sure what is the right way here from CS perspective as well. Are sets of sniffs supposed to be able to contain multiple .xml files? Would we have to have default with all rules rather than have default with core rules and being able to opt in into more?

Probably need to read up on ruleset creation docs, been a while since I looked.

[westonruter]

Yeah, I need to look into how rulesets can be composed as well. I do know that PHPCS 5 is going to allow combining rulesets via --standard, as they posted in April:

Version 1.5.0RC2 also includes the ability to exclude whole directories of sniffs inside a ruleset and the ability to pass multiple standards to PHP_CodeSniffer on the command line. For example, phpcs --standard=PEAR,Squiz,mystandard.xml /path/to/code , which will run 3 standards against your code.

[shadyvb]

@Rarst I think having a selected set of rules - not all - in a default ruleset is not currently possible with the format implemented for ruleset XMLs as per documentation, as you cannot exclude local sniffs from the same ruleset packae, you can only exclude sniffs from included packages. So we're stuck with default containing all rules, and having other XMLs introduce specific sets of checks.

And i think bundling other rulesets does not affect normal flow of phpcs, it should exist as a guide to people not needing the full strict set of sniffs.

And with new feature of being able to combine multiple standards/sniffs/XMLs using --standard, having multiple files that handles smaller portions of sniffs is going to be very handy.

[Rarst]

Has been resolved by current multi–folder/standard structure.