Feature Request: Add refactor functionality

[eddy147]

Environment

Ubuntu 20.04

• Elixir & Erlang versions (elixir --version):
  Erlang/OTP 23 [erts-11.1] [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [ds:2:2:10] [async-threads:1] [hipe]
  Elixir 1.11.2 (compiled with Erlang/OTP 23)

• Operating system:
  Distributor ID: Ubuntu
  Description: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
  Release: 20.04
  Codename: focal

• Editor or IDE name (e.g. Emacs/VSCode):
  VSCode and neovim

• Editor Plugin/LSP Client name:
  neovim: elixir-editors/vim-elixir + https://github.com/elixir-lsp/coc-elixir
  vscode: elixirLS 0.6.2

For other language servers I am used to the refactor/rename functionality, where I can rename functions/variables and the plugin will rename it smartly (other than find and replace).

I am missing that in elixirLS or I can not find it in the documentation. I have tried it in vscode and in (neo)vim.

[axelson]

Hi, thanks for the request. Indeed ElixirLS does not currently support refactoring/renaming, but if someone were to tackle it we'd be glad to help get it merged. (I renamed the title of your request to make it more obviously a feature request).

[HaleTom]

Building the web one link at a time...

I was directed here by this StackOverflow question.

[garrettmichaelgeorge]

Hi, thanks for the request. Indeed ElixirLS does not currently support refactoring/renaming, but if someone were to tackle it we'd be glad to help get it merged. (I renamed the title of your request to make it more obviously a feature request).

@axelson I'd love to see this feature as well as other refactoring capabilities. If you could point me in the right direction, I'd love to take a crack at this.

I'm guessing refactoring commands would go in apps/language_server/lib/language_server/providers/execute_command, perhaps in a nested refactoring directory. Am I on the right track here?

[axelson]

@garrettmichaelgeorge yes, you are on the right track.

#521 is finishing up the implementation of ManipulatePipes which is the only thing that would fall under refactoring at this point. In the future we could add a refactoring directory, but I don't think we need that yet since there's only a small handful of commands currently supported.

[garrettmichaelgeorge]

Sorry I haven't had a chance to follow up on this yet.

I know there's been a lot of (edit: exciting!) discussion lately about recent efforts like Rfx and Sourceror.

While I was focusing on building Sourceror to be this foundation, folks like Andy Leak started working on a framework to build refactoring operations called Rfx. It's nicely coming together and it will soon be ready enough to be able to use Sourceror to perform complex refactoring operations and integrate with existing tooling like ElixirLS or Credo, so check it out too!
— https://dorgan.netlify.app/posts/2021/07/preparing-the-ground-for-source-code-manipulation/

With those libraries tackling Elixir source code manipulation at a deeper level, I'm wondering if I should hold off on attempting something here and instead support their development.

[Sleepful]

Hi, I would love to see this implemented.
But I imagine this is not currently possible with the "find all references" as it currently is, seems like "find all references" is really clunky, sometimes it works and gives me a list of references on my lsp-mode buffer, sometimes it just doesn't do anything. Gotta find the references first before being able to rename them.

[GGuinea]

@lukaszsamson do you have any thoughts about it? Is it possible? :)

[nichita-pasecinic]

any updates on it ?
would be really nice to have it and to refactor (at least rename) without pain )

[axelson]

Hi all, if you'd like this to be built please just leave a 👍 on the issue itself. Comments asking for this to be implemented are not helpful and end up just making noise for the maintainers.

If you're interested, please contribute to some of the tools that are operating in this space. Once one of them is stable and can handle all the edge cases for a given refactoring we can consider bringing it in. Here's some refactoring tools that I'm aware of that you can checkout, try, and submit PRs to:

• https://github.com/hrzndhrn/recode
• https://github.com/ckochx/ex_factor/
• https://github.com/andyl/rfx

[lukaszsamson]

I'm definitely in favour of introducing refactor functionality. Let's divide it into separate and actionable items. "Add refactor" is simply not actionable

[timgent]

@lukaszsamson any thoughts on what the separate items would be?

I'm happy to create an issue for rename functionality if that is helpful? I've started trying to pick up from the POC here - Tuxified#1 (his original PR here - #676)