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Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon github

Do not artificially restrict the set of supported languages

Open esbena opened this issue 3 years ago • 3 comments

Description

The hardcoded set of supported languages in languages.ts makes it hard to experiment with new languages as custom branch with a modified languages.ts is required for every new language.

This PR makes it easier to experiment with new languages by making the codeql-action indifferent to the language choice, except for some additional support for known languages.

Implementation

The old implementation throws an early error if the user-provided language is not in the hardcoded set. As an alternative, a Language is now just a lowercase string, and an early error is only produced if that language is not in the output of codeql resolve languages. The old Language enum is now named KnownLanguage, and is used in the places where additional support for a specific language is desired.

This should be fully backwards compatible, as the implementation now should throw an early exception in fewer situations. This may be detrimental to how early and well users are informed of input mistakes. On the other hand, it is consistent with how the provided codeql and environment behave.

PMs may want to keep the tight coupling between the codeql-action and the GitHub-controlled CodeQL repositories, I do not.

Testing

I will use this branch for some internal experiments for a short while. Hopefully, the many changes wont result in too many conflicts when we are ready to merge.

Merge / deployment checklist

  • [ ] Confirm this change is backwards compatible with existing workflows.
  • [ ] Confirm the readme has been updated if necessary.
  • [ ] Confirm the changelog has been updated if necessary.

esbena avatar Oct 14 '21 19:10 esbena

This is generally a good idea, IMO, especially as we start building out more languages.

aeisenberg avatar Oct 25 '21 21:10 aeisenberg

Will the extra extractors need to be packaged with the distribution, or are you expecting extractors to be resolvable from user supplied qlpacks?

aeisenberg avatar Oct 25 '21 21:10 aeisenberg

If you modify the codeql search path appropriately, you can use your own extractor in the action. We do not document how though.

(See https://github.com/github/codeql-ql/blob/main/.github/workflows/nightly-changes.yml#L82)

esbena avatar Oct 25 '21 22:10 esbena