Could haves

[jhpratt]

Use this discussion for suggestions of "could haves" for a custom linter. Please limit suggestions to one per top-level comment to allow for easier upvoting/downvoting and replies.

[jhpratt]

Lints could be automatically downloaded via a registry.

[jhpratt]

Any objections to having this as a long-term goal? It could be opt-in, such as auto-detect = true, avoiding the need to explicitly specify lint packages.

[xFrednet]

Lints could be renamed by the end user.

This would be interesting if a user wants to

• replace a lint with a drop-in replacement that is named differently
• use one lint twice with different features enabled

[jhpratt]

Thoughts on this as a whole?

[xFrednet]

Sorry, I didn't see your replies (GH notifications for discussions are sometimes not ideal). Anyway, I was thinking of an API like the one that Cargo currently provides for renaming crates while adding them as a dependency. This would mean renaming them lint at the position where they are discovered. (Discussed in #6)

In cargo the syntax is:

custom_name = { version = "1.0", features = ['derive'], package = "serde" }
#                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The original package name

I don't want to define a syntax yet or anything, but at least discuss the possibility of renaming lints this way. Possible solutions for this are also highly dependent on how lints will be discovered in the end. The current plan for the start as agreed in #6 could support a syntax like this.

[jhpratt]

Ah, you meant renaming lint packages, not the lints themselves. I've no objection to that, as it would fall naturally from any registry, crates.io or otherwise. if lints end up being auto-discovered, nothing would stop the end user from manually adding in their own (which would implicitly include renaming).

[xFrednet]

At the start, I actually meant both, supporting the renaming of lints and packages. However, renaming just the package should cover my use case and would be sufficient. 🙃

[jhpratt]

Just checked and apparently while you can use clippy as foo;, it's not possible to then use foo::bar for changing the lint severity. This honestly feels like a bug — either it should work or both should error.

But with relation to us, I think allowing renaming in Cargo.toml is fine. Any objections?