Description Marcel Ackermann 2014-09-29 09:42:03 EDT

The option Java -> Editor -> Save Actions -> Format source code -> Format edited lines is a great new addition to Eclipse 4.2 and behaves exactly as expected, but from a usability kind of perspective a slightly different behaviour would be better: Not only format exactly the lines which have been edited since last save but also include the lines above and below and recursively if they involved a line break.

Example:
currently saved:
example("this is a method which has such a long input, that it"+
" needs to be broken at line end")

edit:
example("new param that leads to different line break", "this is a method which has such a long input, that it"+
" needs to be broken at line end")

after save:
example("new param that leads to different line break", 
"this is a method which has such a long input, that it"+
" needs to be broken at line end")

expected:
example("new param that leads to different line break", 
"this is a method which has such a long input, that it needs to be broken"+
" at line end")

I think it should be sufficient to just include +/-1 lines of an edited line, or maybe add an option that allows formatting the whole method + javadoc of a method where one line has been edited.