[buildifier] `--lint=warn --warnings=-unsorted-dict-items` is still fixing unsorted-dict-items

[nickdesaulniers]

$ ./buildifier-linux-amd64 --lint=warn --warnings=all common/external/BUILD.bazel
common/external/BUILD.bazel:13: unsorted-dict-items: Dictionary items are out of their lexicographical order. (https://github.com/bazelbuild/buildtools/blob/main/WARNINGS.md#unsorted-dict-items)
common/external/BUILD.bazel:15: unsorted-dict-items: Dictionary items are out of their lexicographical order. (https://github.com/bazelbuild/buildtools/blob/main/WARNINGS.md#unsorted-dict-items)
common/external/BUILD.bazel:17: unsorted-dict-items: Dictionary items are out of their lexicographical order. (https://github.com/bazelbuild/buildtools/blob/main/WARNINGS.md#unsorted-dict-items)

$ git reset --hard
$ ./buildifier-linux-amd64 --lint=warn --warnings=-unsorted-dict-items common/external/BUILD.bazel
$ git diff
<common/external/BUILD.bazel has dict items sorted>

!!!

I did not pass --lint=fix, so it's surprising this was fixed, doubly so since I disabled warning on unsorted-dict-items. How do I disable automatically fixing unsorted-dict-items? Perhaps https://github.com/bazelbuild/buildtools/tree/main/buildifier#linter needs an update.

[nickdesaulniers]

It seems perhaps that buildifier can't be used to fix individual types of warnings?

[vladmos]

The issue with fixing warning with the --lint=warn flag looks indeed like a bug, but I can't reproduce it, could you please double check it on your side and, if it's reproducible, share the exact version of the binary and the contents of the file?

As for disabling individual types of warnings: it's possible both with --lint=warn and --lint=fix. In your example you pass the flag --warnings=all which means "include all warning categories, even those that are disabled by default". The default value of the flag is equal to --warnings=default, which is currently defined as all warnings except for "unsorted-dict-items", so if you want to disable just those warnings, just don't pass the flag.

If you want to specify the warning categories explicitly you can use one of the following syntaxes:

--warnings=foo,bar  # to list the exact categories that you need

or

--warnings=+foo,-bar  # the semantics is "the default set with 'foo' but without 'bar'

Note that these two ways of passing the categories can't be mixed, i.e. --warnings=foo,+bar,-baz won't work.