Allow the --sarif flag to accept an optional filename

[ujlbu4]

Problem statement

Currently, the --sarif flag is a boolean that only prints the SARIF report to the console. There is no way to specify a filename for the SARIF output, nor is it possible to receive both a SARIF report and a human-readable text report at the same time.

When using --sarif, the usual aggregated, human-friendly issue summary is not shown. The existing --summary flag only provides a minimal statistic (number of issues), which is insufficient for many use cases.

My use case is to run it during ci/cd pipeline, upload sarif report to gitlab artifacts , while in console log have ability a quick look on errors via human readable output

Solution brainstorm (optional)

• Allow the --sarif flag to accept an optional filename, so users can direct the SARIF output to a file.
• Continue to write the human-readable report to stdout, just as if the --sarif flag was not set.

Examples:

• qlty check --sarif filename.sarif
  Writes the SARIF report to a file, and the human-readable report to the console.
• qlty check --sarif
  Writes the SARIF report to the console.
• qlty check
  Writes the human-readable report to the console, with no SARIF file.

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Alternatively, an additional flag could be introduced to allow human-readable reports to be written to a file.

[brynary]

Thanks for this idea. It is an interesting one.

I certainly see the benefit of being able to get a SARIF export and also a human readable report without needing to re-run the analysis.

I don't think we currently have any arguments which have an optional value. I think the next step here is to look at the argument parser Crate we use, clap, and see if it supports this.

[giftkugel]

I would like to support that request.

I was really wondering that no report can be generated by the Qlty CLI using qlty check at all.
I saw that --sarif flag and thought this could solve it somehow. Then I realized the output is just written at standard out. 😢

Without a report it is hard to apply further processing (e.g. make other automated decisions)

Other tools allow to generate reports in different formats (e.g. JSON, HTML, etc)