Shots

So I wrote about the error I got from running Rubocop in Github Workflow, and I was determined to find out the root of the problem.

With some digging around the documentation and following a thread of discussions, I figured some what the root of the problem and solved it. So a few things happened.

I quote from the documentation:

Remember that your configuration files override RuboCops’s defaults. …omitted… This behavior of Include (overriding default.yml) was introduced in 0.56.0 via #5882. This change allows people to include/exclude precisely what they need to, without the defaults getting in the way.

It is odd, that even though I had explicitly defined Include option for only lib/**/*.rb and spec/**/*.rb, Rubocop still attempted to look outside of these folders.

So let’s look at the Exclude option in my own .rubocop.yml. Here, I explicitly only specified files under spec/**/*.rb that I wanted to exclude. I guess here’s where things went wrong.

AllCops:
  Exclude:
    - spec/fixtures/**/*
    - spec/scenarios/**/*
    - spec/spec_helper.rb

By default, Rubocop already excludes vendor/**/*, but as per the documentation above, when the user defines the Exclude option, it will completely override all defaults from Rubocop. In a way, it will “undo” the default exclusion of vendor/**/*, so even though my Include option did not specify vendor/**/*, it will still attempt to search inside the directory.

In order to still use Rubocop’s defaults, we can go the brute-force way of copying all the Include/Exclude options from Rubocop’s config/default.yml. But that’s not very friendly, so the other way is to inherit from the defaults and add additional Include/Exclude options.

Luckily I was not the first to encounter such an issue, so I just referenced what other people did and modified accordingly. And here’s the fix for it.

inherit_from:
  - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rubocop/rubocop/v1.45.1/config/default.yml

inherit_mode:
  merge:
    - Include
    - Exclude

AllCops:
  Exclude:
    - spec/fixtures/**/*
    - spec/scenarios/**/*
    - spec/spec_helper.rb

Now the build passes on Github Workflow, and I can go sit back and relax and enjoy another shot of expresso.

Today, I was trying to setup the Github Workflow for Coffeebrew Jekyll Archives plugin to run test cases and lint the code.

Here’s the initial setup (excerpts):

jobs:
  test:
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Ruby
        uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
        with:
          ruby-version: $
          bundler-cache: true
      - name: Run tests
        run: bash script/cibuild

The script/cibuild script basically just does 3 things (excerpts):

bundle install
bundle exec rubocop -D -E $@
bundle exec rspec "$@"

Then I kept running into the error:

RuboCop 1.45.1
cannot load such file -- rubocop-minitest
/home/runner/work/coffeebrew_jekyll_archives/coffeebrew_jekyll_archives/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.2.0/gems/rubocop-1.45.1/lib/rubocop/feature_loader.rb:46:in `rescue in rescue in load'

In my mind I was like: “Why on earth did rubocop-minitest get into my project?”. I tried a few Google searches, they mostly just mention something along the line of “remember to require: rubocop-minitest in your .rubocop.yml”.

But why? I didn’t even use minitest in my project!

Then with some luck, I stumbled upon this Stack Overflow question. It’s not exactly the same problem, but the response seems promising. So I followed the advice and updated my .rubocop.yml to exclude vendor/**/*.

Lo and behold, my workflow run finally succeeded. Here’s the fix.

This will not be the end, I will need to figure out why did Rubocop also try to lint the dependencies when I already specified the Include option to:

AllCops:
  Include:
    - lib/**/*.rb
    - spec/**/*.rb

This will be another shot/article that I write when I figure it out. Hope this shot gives you a boost for the day. Stay tuned for more!