issues with DotProto.Rendering

[joshsh]

The following is a collection of apparent issues DotProto.Rendering and DotProto.AST which are making it hard to generate *.proto files which are valid and readable.

Indentation

Messages are formatted like this:

message Aircraft { string tailNumber = 1; // The aircraft's registration number
                 }

whereas they should be formatted more like this:

message Aircraft {
  string tailNumber = 1; // The aircraft's registration number
}

Multiline comments

Field-level comments with line breaks come out wrong. E.g. a three-line comment on the tailNumber field currently looks like this (resulting in an invalid *.proto file):

message Aircraft { string tailNumber = 1; // First line of comment
Second line of comment
Third line of comment
                 }

The suffix-style comments also have the problem that long lines extend outside of an 80-char buffer. Can we just use block comments everywhere? E.g.

message Aircraft {
  /*
   * First line of comment
   * Second line of comment
   * Third line of comment
   */
  string tailNumber = 1;
}

Double-newlines for readability

The generated *.proto files currently insert at most one newline between subsequent headers and definitions. It would improve readability if an additional newline were inserted. For example, in:

syntax = "proto3";
package time;
import "./basic.proto";
enum DayOfWeek {SUNDAY = 0;
                MONDAY = 1;
                TUESDAY = 2;
                WEDNESDAY = 3;
                THURSDAY = 4;
                FRIDAY = 5;
                SATURDAY = 6;}

DotProtoDefinition-level comments?

DotProtoField allows a comment. What about DotProtoDefinition (for message, enum, and service definitions)? Am I missing something?

[joshsh]

Btw. I have created an improved pretty printer in the meantime. This could be contributed as a diff if it is of interest. It replaces the current printer.

[Gabriella439]

@joshsh: Definitely! Please open a pull request 🙂