linty

Simple, language-agnostic linter

Table of Contents

• linty
  • Table of Contents
  • Background
  • Usage
  • Installation
  • Maintainers

Background

Have you ever fixed a bug and wished you could warn other developers about that exact pitfall?

Do you wish there was an easy way to ban TODOs in your codebase?

Many language-specific linters are flexible enough to add new regex-based rules, but what if you want to ban a regex across your codebase, regardless of file? What if you're using a language that doesn't have a fancy linter of its own?

That's where Linty comes in - it's a simple, language-agnostic linter to check for regex patterns across your codebase.

Usage

Linty operates on a set of rules, each of which is a regex, a set of include globs, a set of exclude globs, and an associated error message and severity (warning or error). Linty checks each regex against all the files it finds in the include glob but not the exclude glob, and warning or erroring as appropriate.

By default, Linty looks for a .lintyconfig.json file in your current directory. You can specify a different path with the --config-path option.

{
  "rules": [
    {
      "id": "WarnOnTodos",
      "message": "Are you sure you meant to leave a TODO?",
      "regex": "(TODO|todo)",
      "severity": "warning",
    },
    {
      "id": "NoXcxcInDocs",
      "message": "Don't leave xcxc in docs!",
      "regex": "(XCXC|xcxc)",
      "severity": "error",
      "includes": ["**/*.md"],
      "excludes": ["**/testing/*.md"]
    }
  ]
}

For each rule, it will apply the regex to each file found in the set of provided globs. If no globs are provided, it will apply the regex to all files recursively, starting with the current directory. Files included in the ignore globs will be ignored. If the --pre-commit option is specified, it will only apply the rules to files staged with git. If explicit file paths are passed to Linty, it will only apply the rules to those files (unless --pre-commit is also specified, in which case this input is ignored). By default, Linty respects .gitignore files, but you can enable checking .gitignore files with --ignore. Similarly, Linty won't lint hidden files, but you can enable that with --hidden.

If any error rules fail, Linty will report all failing rules and exit with exit code 1. If no error rules fail, Linty will exit with exit code 0. If a warn rule fails, Linty will ask the user to confirm the warning manually. If the --error-on-warning flag is used, warnings will instead be treated as errors; if the --no-confirm flag is used, Linty will just print the warning, with no manual confirmation.

You can also use TOML syntax by specifying a .lintyconfig.toml with the --config-path option:

[[rules]]
id = "WarnOnTodos"
message = "Are you sure you meant to leave a TODO?"
regex = "(TODO|todo)"
severity = "warning"

[[rules]]
id = "NoXcxcInDocs"
message = "Don't leave xcxc in docs!"
regex = "(XCXC|xcxc)"
severity = "error"
includes = [ "**/*.md" ]
excludes = [ "**/README.md" ]

Installation

With Homebrew on macOS:

brew tap rwblickhan/linty
brew install linty

Maintainers

@rwblickhan