I see from the docs that detekt can validate formatting via ktlint, but can it also format files with it?

Yes we do have the autoCorrect flag exactly for that

What would gradle cmdline look like for this?

when I was using detekt with the autoformatting, I think just running detekt was autoformatting everything, but not sure, that was long time ago

Oh? Is there a way to separate out formatting and checking?

not sure tbh, that was long time ago

The gradle cmq line for autocorrect will be

--auto-correct

but will be available in Detekt 1.19.0 (the next release).

Btw, I've always been curious how custon cli args are implemented in gradle. Could you point me to some code?

Here you go 🙂 https://github.com/detekt/detekt/pull/4202

Wow, can't believe how simple this is

--auto-correct

works so because it is a boolean, if it was an string, I think it was

--some-task-prop=someString

Ah, just read in gradle docs today that

=

is recommended, but optional

--auto-correct if the variable is a boolean set it as true

I meant

--my-option="value"

is understood as identical to

--my-option "value"

by gradle

interesting, TIL

But gradle recommends using

=

. Maybe they have plans to make it mandatory in the future 🤷