Allow `targetExclude` to be passed a directory (`Directory`, `DirectoryProperty`, `Provider<Directory>`, etc.)

[bric3]

One could be tempted to exclude a directory via targetExclude, e.g. project.layout.buildDirectory

spotless {
  scala {
    toggleOffOn()
    targetExclude(project.layout.buildDirectory)
    scalafmt('2.7.5').configFile(configPath + '/enforcement/spotless-scalafmt.conf')
  }
}

However this doesn't work as it's not handled specifically. So when the task is configured, it uses the dir as a regular "file", and the operation here does nothing (target and targetExclude are FileCollection)

https://github.com/diffplug/spotless/blob/d3a160d8d9f3576cca751344e91d14b0d33beb2e/plugin-gradle/src/main/java/com/diffplug/gradle/spotless/FormatExtension.java#L1078

The alternative is to expand this to a FileTree before passing it to targetExclude. In this case the operation above correctly removes the files nested under the directory.

-    targetExclude(project.layout.buildDirectory)
+    targetExclude(project.layout.buildDirectory.asFileTree)

However, I believe that spotless could do that automatically, if the type is known to represent a directory.

---

On another note I tried to pass a Provider<String> (targetExclude(genDirectory.map { it.asFile.path + "/**/*.scala" })), but this was interpreted as a single file (because the value is passed to project.files(...)).

[nedtwigg]

seems like a good idea, PR's welcome

[Pankraz76]

Having not fully understood the issue, I’m wondering if it’s related to normalizing the directories as well.

I’m also assuming this approach would only handle one level of directories. If a directory contains subdirectories, those wouldn’t be handled correctly, and the same issue would likely occur.

• https://github.com/diffplug/spotless/pull/2691