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MergeAndOrderSections

Merge duplicated sections and order them.

Disabling the formatter

MergeAndOrderSections is included in the default formatters, but it can be also run separately with:

robocop format --select MergeAndOrderSections

You can also disable it:

robocop format --configure MergeAndOrderSections.enabled=False

The default order is: Comments > Settings > Variables > Test Cases > Keywords.

# this is comment section
*** Keywords ***
Keyword
    No Operation

*** Test Cases ***
Test 1
    Log  1

Test 2
    Log  2

*** Settings ***
Library  somelib.py
Test Template    Template


*** Keyword ***
Keyword2
    Log  2
    FOR  ${i}  IN RANGE  10
        Log  ${i}
    END

*** Test Cases ***
Test 3
    Log  3


*** Variables ***  this should be left  alone
${var}  1
@{var2}  1
...  2


*** settings***
Task Timeout  4min

Force Tags  sometag  othertag

*** Comments ***

# this is comment section
*** Settings ***
Library  somelib.py
Test Template    Template


Task Timeout  4min

Force Tags  sometag  othertag
*** Variables ***  this should be left  alone
${var}  1
@{var2}  1
...  2


*** Test Cases ***
Test 1
    Log  1

Test 2
    Log  2

Test 3
    Log  3


*** Keywords ***
Keyword
    No Operation

Keyword2
    Log  2
    FOR  ${i}  IN RANGE  10
        Log  ${i}
    END

Custom order

You can change sorting order by configuring order parameter with the comma-separated list of section names (without spaces):

robocop format --configure MergeAndOrderSections.order=settings,keywords,variables,testcases,comments

[tool.robocop.format]
configure = [
    "MergeAndOrderSections.order=settings,keywords,variables,testcases,comments"
]

Miscellaneous

Because merging and changing the order of sections can shuffle your empty lines it's greatly advised to always run NormalizeNewLines formatter after this one. This is done by default, so this advice applies only if you're running formatters separately.

If both *** Test Cases *** and *** Tasks *** are defined in one file they will be merged into one (header name will be taken from the first encountered section).

Any data before the first section is treated as comment in Robot Framework. This formatter add *** Comments *** section for such lines:

i am comment
# robocop: off
*** Settings ***

*** Comments ***
i am comment
# robocop: off
*** Settings ***

You can disable this behaviour by setting create_comment_section to False:

robocop format --configure MergeAndOrderSections.create_comment_section=False

[tool.robocop.format]
configure = [
    "MergeAndOrderSections.create_comment_section=False"
]