Workspace Commands: Add Option to Run Against a Single Package

[jopmiddelkamp]

I’d like to see support for targeting a single package in the workspace commands, similar to how Melos worked—but with inverted defaults. Ideally:

• Default: run the command on the entire workspace
  dart format → formats everything
• Optional: packages selection
  dart format -p → formats only a selected package
• Optional: target a specific package
  dart format -p <package> → formats only that package

This removes the need to dive into nested package directories just to run a command on one package, while keeping “run everything” as the standard, convenient default.

[lrhn]

This sounds like making the Dart CLI workspace aware and making dart format default to formatting the current workspace if there is one. If there isn't, it could default to formatting the current Pub package. Otherwise probably don't do anything.

You can format a package as dart format pkgs/<package>, but you do need to know the path there from where you currently are.

That seems safer than making a guess at which files are part of a package.
To do that right, you probably want to:

• Find the workspace, and all packages of that workspace, and all Dart files under any of those directories.
  • If a package has a nested package (usually in example/), which isn't a workspace-resolved package, should it be formatted?
  • If a package in pkgs/ of the workspace doesn't use workspace resolution, should it be formatted?
  • Should it check .gitignore for files to ignore? (Should dart format do that today?)

It feels a little dangerous to format a lot of files without the user specifically asking for it. A default that formats everything in the workspace if you forget to give a directory, is a little worrisome.

On the other hand, how often do you need to format that much? Once, after each significant formatter change, then after that, you can just format the files you've worked on.

(I have a script that checks which files were changed in Git since some point, and then formats only those. I also sometimes have .gitignore'd sub-directories inside a repository, which are used while developing, but are not part of the package. I wouldn't want to waste time formatting those.)