HTTP Imports with Analyzer

[DartBot]

This issue was originally filed by @kaendfinger

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What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Clone https://github.com/DirectMyFile/tricks
2. dartanalyzer http_imports.dart

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

It should say no issues found. Instead it does not resolve HTTP Imports, which results in undefined functions.

➜ tricks git:(master) dartanalyzer http_imports.dart
Analyzing [http_imports.dart]...
[error] Target of URI does not exist: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DirectMyFile/scraps/master/numbers/ack.dart' (/Users/alex/DirectCode/tricks/http_imports.dart, line 2, col 8)
[warning] The function 'ack' is not defined (/Users/alex/DirectCode/tricks/http_imports.dart, line 5, col 9)
1 error and 1 warning found.

What version of the product are you using?

➜ tricks git:(master) dart --version
Dart VM version: 1.9.0-edge.44648 (Mon Mar 23 14:32:53 2015) on "macos_x64"
On what operating system?
Mac OSX 10.10.2

[bwilkerson]

Would it work to define a package in the pubspec.yaml file that has the given URI as it's source?

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Removed Priority-Unassigned label.
Added Priority-Medium, Area-Analyzer, NeedsInfo labels.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @kaendfinger

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It does not, because the URI is not in a package, unless that's not an issue. The analysis server always runs on the Server VM, so resolving HTTP imports should be easier than it would be for the analyzer package. There are plenty of use cases for HTTP imports, so it seems like the Analysis Server should support it.

[bwilkerson]

I'm not an expert, but it looks like something like a 'hosted' or 'git' dependency would work for this case (https://www.dartlang.org/tools/pub/dependencies.html#dependency-sources). If not, then I'd like to suggest enhancing pub to support this use case as well.

While I'm aware of the fact that the VM supports http: URI's, in order for analyzer to do so we would need to copy the file onto disk somewhere and then analyze it from there. Given that pub already does that for us, it would be better if analyzer didn't need to re-invent the wheel.

Of course, that solution might not work for the VM until the package-spec enhancement (dart-archive/dart_enhancement_proposals#5) is approved, so even if we can use pub we might need a short-term workaround.

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cc @munificent.

[munificent]

There are plenty of use cases for HTTP imports, so it seems like the Analysis Server should support it.

While the language and VM support it, I don't think it's a good practice in general. I don't think we plan to make it any easier to use these in pub.

[munificent]

Added NotPlanned label.