1.11.0

Yet another big release in a row 🚀. This time around we bring you 14 new rules - and we finally reached over 100 rules! Most of them try to analyze possible syntax errors and hint you what you possibly did wrong - e.g. if you forgot to put at least 2 spaces after setting. We also included various fixes and improvements for issue reporting.

Unfortunately, there are backward-incompatible changes - E0304, missing-whitespace-after-setting, variable-should-left-aligned and invalid-char-in-name were renamed (details in the release notes).

BTW This week is Robocop's first anniversary 🎂! What a journey it was - nearly 500 issues on GitHub, 20 releases, over 100 implemented rules, over 340 tests and thousands lines of code. Let the Robocop's watch never ends 👮‍♂️!

New rules

• W0318 (bdd-without-keyword-call) checks if BDD-reserved keyword was used (Given, When, And, Then, But) with no keyword following it (#159)

Given  # throws warning
Given  Some Keyword  # throws warning. Popular mistake - separating action keyword from BDD keyword
Given Some Keyword 

• E0811 (duplicated-argument-name) for duplicated argument names. This type of error is silently ignored during execution but leads to unexpected results (#401)

*** Keywords ***
Keyword
    [Arguments]    ${var}    ${var}
    Log  ${var}

• I0812 (duplicated-assigned-var-name) looks for duplicated names of assigned variables (#480)

${var}  ${var}  ${Var}   My Keyword

• E0404 (variables-import-with-args) is reported when using variable imports with arguments when resource extension does not allow it (#435)

*** Settings ***
Variables  other.py    arg1  # it's fine
Variables  variables.robot    arg  # not allowed

• W1015 (misaligned-continuation-row) for alignment of multiline statements (#438)

    Keyword Call
      ...  ${correct}
      ...     ${incorrect}

• E0412 (invalid-for-loop) for invalid FOR loop syntax (#445)
• E0413 (invalid-if) for invalid IF statement syntax (#483 #439)
• E0405 (invalid-continuation-mark) for invalid syntax of continuation line (.. value or .... value) (#483 #439)
• E0407 (invalid-argument) for invalid syntax of argument (for example [Arguments] 1 string instead of variable name) (#483 #439)
• E0408 (not-existing-setting) when trying to use setting with not recognized name ([Idontexist]) (#483 #439)
• E0409 (setting-not-supported) when using setting not available in given type of body - for example [Arguments] in Test Case or [Template] in keyword) (#483 #439)
• E0410 (not-enough-whitespace-after-variable) for example ${variable} 1 (which will not be recognized as proper variable by Robot) instead of ${variable}  1 (#483 #439)
• E0411 (not-enough-whitespace-after-suite-setting) for example Library BuiltIn (not recognized by Robot) instead of Library  BuiltIn (#463)
• E1016 (suite-setting-should-be-left-aligned) because settings are not recognized if they are not left aligned (#462)

*** Settings ***
    Library  Collections

Backward-incompatible changes

• Renamed E0304 rule id to E0406 (name not-enough-whitespace-after-newline-marker did not change). Additionally, this rule catches a lot more instances of this issue
• Renamed missing-whitespace-after-setting to not-enough-whitespace-after-setting
• Renamed variable-should-left-aligned to variable-should-be-left-aligned (#478)
• Rule invalid-char-in-name is renamed to not-allowed-char-in-name. It now accepts a regex pattern as value of configurable (which is renamed from invalid_chars to pattern) and it checks if the name of keyword/test case/suite complies with the regex. (#466) Example of usage:

robocop -c not-allowed-char-in-name:pattern:[.?%]      # reports when one of `.`, `?` or `%` character is found in the name
robocop -c not-allowed-char-in-name:pattern:[^a-zA-Z]  # reports when there are characters different then provided in the regex (note the `^` that negates the match)

Fixes

• Rule W0807 (duplicated-variables-import) now correctly recognizes arguments passed to variable import (#434)

*** Settings ***
Variables  vars.py  arg1
Variables  vars.py  arg2  # it's not considered duplicate now

• Rule W0301 (invalid-char-in-name) now correctly ignores all type of variables in keyword name (including patterns in embedded vars) (#457)
• Files using different encoding (such as Czech or Slovak language) should be now correctly parsed by Robocop (#455)
• Variable definition with not enough whitespace after variable name will now be properly recognized and will not be reported as other issues (#464)
• Not enough whitespace after new line mark (...) is now ignored by other rules such as duplicated-variable (#460)
• All possible parsing errors should now be reported (#461)
• Loaded configuration from will not be printed if the configuration is empty (#446)

Other

• Rule W0508 (line-too-long) now ignores lines matching configured pattern. Default pattern is http(s) links (#348)
  It can be configured:
  robocop -c line-too-long:ignore_pattern:your\s+regex\s+pattern <path_to_tests>
• Robocop now parses Robot Framework DataError instead of reporting it directly as parsing-error. It allows us to give more detailed information about errors (for example when missing whitespace after setting) (#439)
• Revised and improved reported issue position (line and column) for all rules. Now it's consistent and also more precise for some of the issues (#289)
• Changed how duplication rules are reported - instead of reporting on each duplicated line, it now reports on original (but it points to original in duplicated message) (#482)
  Multiple keywords with name "Duplicated Keyword" (first occurrence in line 15)
• Robocop source code is now formatted with black (#485)

Acknowledgements

Thanks @MoreFamed for bug issues