When I provide path to black, the extension adds --version arg that cannot be removed

[janvorac-solargis]

I wanted to use the newest black already, so I installed it to my venv and set the path for the formatter extension in settings.json:

"black-formatter.path": [
        "~/path/to/.venv/bin/black"
    ]

After I run "format document", the code gets rewritten to

black, 24.1.0 (compiled: yes)
Python (CPython) 3.8.13

When I check the "OUTPUT" panel in VSC, I see that it ran this command:

~/path/to/.venv/bin/black --version --stdin-filename ~/path/to/file.py -

Which makes sense, because when you run black --version, you obtain the two lines I pasted above. Obviously, you don't want to rewrite your code with black's version.

When I set args for black in settings.json

    "black-formatter.args": [
        "--stdin-filename"
    ]

I see in the output, that this gets appended to the two arguments that were already there:

~/path/to/.venv/bin/black --version --stdin-filename --stdin-filename ~/path/to/file.py -

From which I conclude that the extension adds --version --stdin-filename by itself and it cannot be turned off. Could you please verify this and eventually fix it?

Thank you!

[karthiknadig]

@janvorac-solargis Can you share your entire logs and your settings?

We do a --version check once at the beginning to get version but actual formatting run does not include that. We automatically add --stdin-filename to actually perform formatting, this is needed to do formatting with VS Code.

This is how formatting in VS Code works: VS Code gives us the changes as plain string, and we use stdin to pass that to black to format. Return the formatted changes VS Code to save to disk.

So, --version and --stdin-filename (or equivalent) are needed for the extension to operate. The args setting is there for you to configure some CLI switches, like line length, config, skip source first line, etc.

[karthiknadig]

We have a PR https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-black-formatter/pull/426 that updates the version shipped with extension to latest black (24.1.1)

[janvorac-solargis]

Hi, my settings.json:

{
    "workbench.colorTheme": "Default Dark Modern",
    "editor.inlineSuggest.enabled": true,
    "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 15,
    "chat.editor.fontSize": 16,
    "editor.fontSize": 15,
    "terminal.integrated.inheritEnv": false,
    "[python]": {
        "editor.defaultFormatter": "ms-python.black-formatter",
        "editor.formatOnSave": false
    },
    "redhat.telemetry.enabled": true,
    "github.copilot.enable": {
        "*": true,
        "plaintext": true,
        "markdown": false,
        "scminput": false,
        "python": true
    },
    "isort.showNotifications": "onError",
    "isort.check": true,
    "isort.args": [
        "--profile",
        "black",
        "--skip-gitignore",
        "--line-length",
        "88"
    ],
    "window.zoomLevel": 1,
    "black-formatter.showNotifications": "always",
    "black-formatter.path": [
        "/home/anonymized/.venv/bin/black"
    ]
}

The output of the Black Formatter extension

2024-01-29 19:00:26.023 [info] [Trace - 7:00:26 PM] Sending request 'textDocument/formatting - (1)'.
2024-01-29 19:00:26.034 [info] [Trace - 7:00:26 PM] Received notification 'window/logMessage'.
2024-01-29 19:00:26.034 [info] /home/anonymized/.venv/bin/black --version --stdin-filename /home/anonymized/path/to/file/test_lambda.py -
2024-01-29 19:00:26.035 [info] [Trace - 7:00:26 PM] Received notification 'window/logMessage'.
2024-01-29 19:00:26.035 [info] CWD Server: /home/anonymized/code/sg2-eval-all-computation-nodes-and-infra
2024-01-29 19:00:26.213 [info] [Trace - 7:00:26 PM] Received response 'textDocument/formatting - (1)' in 190ms.
2024-01-29 19:00:26.232 [info] [Trace - 7:00:26 PM] Sending notification 'textDocument/didChange'.

I guess I should add that I am using VSC 1.86.0-insider with Black Formatter v2023.9.10291734 (pre-release)

[janvorac-solargis]

Oddly enough, when I try to replicate on a simple file (just a print("A")) in my /home dir, the formatter worked just fine. Perhaps the length of the file plays a role?

[karthiknadig]

@janvorac-solargis Thanks for the details. This is a bug, I am able to reproduce.