In workspaces, cargo fmt only works in the top-level directory #8724

[jyn514]

Describe the bug

$ cargo fmt
Failed to find targets
cargo-fmt 1.4.18
This utility formats all bin and lib files of the current crate using rustfmt.

USAGE:
    cargo fmt [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [-- <rustfmt-options>...]

FLAGS:
        --all        Format all packages (only usable in workspaces)
    -q, --quiet      No output printed to stdout
    -v, --verbose    Use verbose output
        --version    Print rustfmt version and exit

OPTIONS:
        --manifest-path <manifest-path>      Specify path to Cargo.toml
        --message-format <message-format>    Specify message-format: short|json|human
    -p, --package <package>...               Specify package to format (only usable in workspaces)

ARGS:
    <rustfmt-options>...    Options passed to rustfmt

To Reproduce

1. cargo new outer && cd outer
2. cargo new inner
3. printf '[workspace]\nmembers = ["inner"]' >> Cargo.toml
4. cd src
5. cargo fmt

Expected behavior

cargo fmt should format all packages in the workspace, like it does from the top-level directory.

Meta

• rustfmt version: rustfmt 1.4.21-nightly (01f2ead 2020-09-04), but the problem is also present on rustfmt 1.4.18-stable (8157a3f 2020-07-15)
• From where did you install rustfmt?: rustup
• How do you run rustfmt: cargo fmt

[calebcartwright]

cargo fmt should format all packages in the workspace, like it does from the top-level directory.

You need to include the --allflag if you want to run against the entire workspace from a sub directory. Some more info here

[jyn514]

It should say that in the error message, then. Right now it just looks like a bug.

[calebcartwright]

It should say that in the error message, then. Right now it just looks like a bug.

I just wanted to clarify that the expected behavior you provided in the issue description was not in alignment with the expected cargo fmt behavior. Full workspace formatting from a subdirectory is supposed to be an opt-in via the flag so that folks have the ability to format just the local member as well as the entire workspace.

That being said, I do agree there's a bug and suspect it's a regression of an older one

[epage]

@calebcartwright it is unclear to me what is considered the bug in this scenario and what the expected behavior since it sounds like some of the behavior is expected.

Personally, I would expect it to behave like cargo build and when run inside of a src directory, it would format that crate. Also worth noting that this behavior is different, depending on if you are in a workspace or not.

(came across this issue when looking at #5010)

[jyn514]

This also happens if you're not inside of any package inside the workspace, e.g. a .github folder. I would expect that to format the whole workspace since it's unambiguous.

[sanmai-NL]

See also #2280.

[ethanuppal]

What are the updates on this?