Improve error output - multiline errors

[seanhess]

The error output is really hard to read. Specifically, errors usually span 3 lines, and vim-flow currently identifies the 3rd line as another error, when it is extra information about the current error.

Could we indent that 3rd line and not have it appear as another error?

I would also suggest remove the || between lines.

For a great example to follow, see this typescript plugin: https://github.com/leafgarland/typescript-vim

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[brentvatne]

I made a couple of changes to my local setup to make this a bit nicer...

Before:

After:

In plugin/flow.vim I changed flow_errorformat to this:

let s:flow_errorformat = '%AFile "%f"\, line %l\, characters %c-%.%#,%Z%m,'

Only change here is from %E to %A so you don't see "error" in each line (annoying imo)

Then I changed the command to execute flow, appending a pipe into format-flow at the end:

let command = g:flow#flowpath.' --timeout 2 --retry-if-init false --from vim '.expand('%:p').' '.a:suffix . ' | format-flow'

And format-flow is just a really ugly node script that I built in a couple minutes with trial-and-error and it sits in my path:

#!/usr/bin/env node

const fileLine = /^File.*?characters.*?$/;

process.stdin.resume();
process.stdin.setEncoding('utf8');
process.stdin.on('data', function(data) {
  let lines = data.split('\n');
  let result = '';
  let lastLineWasFileLine = false;

  lines.forEach((line, i) => {
    if (line.match(fileLine)) {
      lastLineWasFileLine = true;
      if (i > 0) {
        process.stdout.write('\n');
      }
      process.stdout.write(line);
      process.stdout.write('\n');
    } else {
      if (!lastLineWasFileLine) {
        if (line) {
          process.stdout.write(' - ' + line);
        }
      } else {
        process.stdout.write(line);
      }
      lastLineWasFileLine = false;
    }
  });
});

[danihodovic]

I have a proof of concept hack that uses JSON to construct error messages so that the error messages in the quickfix list don't span multiple lines. See https://github.com/danihodovic/vim-flow/tree/fix-error-format or specifically danihodovic@0d6870e.

[rafaelrinaldi]

Why not exposing flow_errorformat globally so users don't have to come up with ad-hoc workarounds in order to change it?

Current output format is indeed very bad to read.

We might even be able to take advantage of great work already done out there such as flow-vim-quickfix.

[hashar]

@danihodovic approach of using flow --json. His Format_json_error_msg is straightforward. Though in the patch flow is invoked via system instead of FlowClientCall, but that looks promising.

[andykais]

has there been any progress on this? This issue is still open so are any core members working on it?