rust-diagnostics

This is a utility to insert diagnostics of code fragments as comments in Rust code. Rust compiler produces many diagnostic information to the console, using file name and line numbers to indicate the exact location. However, that requires a programmer to go back and forth between the command console and an editor. This utility would make it easier to insert the diagnostic messages in place, similar to the idea of 'in-place' editing concept. The diagnostic information added into the code sequence could enable further transformer-based machine learning approaches to analyse the semantics of Rust programas.

Currently we integrate it with clippy.

The format of the commented code would look like the following code.

Note that this is a result applying the rust-diagnostic utilility on its own implementation, i.e., eating our own dog food :-) We have manually resolved all the clippy warnings according to the clippy rules, except the one on dbg_macro to show the results as an example.

Update

• Insert two comments around the diagnositic spans;
• Name the comments by the lint rules, and insert the rendered diagnostics in the second comment, e.g.,

                                    /*#[Warning(clippy::dbg_macro)*/dbg!(&r)/*
#[Warning(clippy::dbg_macro)
note: for further information visit https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/master/index.html#dbg_macro
the lint level is defined here
ensure to avoid having uses of it in version control*/;

contains a Warning as the diagnostic code, and clippy::dbg_macro as the name of the lint rule violated by the code dbg!(&msg).

• Insert rendered diagnostic messages in the second comment.
• Add an option --fix to do risky fix whenever possible.

Acknowledgement

• Thanks for David Wood, who offered the idea that we can use the --message-format=json option to get diagnostic information from the Rust compiler, which saves tremendous effort in modifying the Rust compiler. Now our solution is kind of independent from the Rust compiler implementations.