Olint

Olint is a standalone linting tool designed to operate independently of git cycles. It detects available linting tools and scans the entire file tree, starting from the current working directory, to process recently changed files first, regardless of their location.

Ideally suited when examining an already checked out project, or some local code, not in any repository.

If a file is successfully linted, Olint saves its filename and the time of its latest change in a cache. On subsequent runs, Olint skips files that haven't changed.

Installation

To install Olint, follow these steps:

1. Download the latest release or clone the repository.
2. Run ./deploy this is used both to install and to update.
3. Execute olint -l to list available linters, and install any missing ones from the supported list that you plan to use.

Usage

To use Olint, simply run the olint command followed by any options or arguments you want to pass. For example:

olint -C 4

This command checks files changed in the last 4 hours and continues with the next file after linting issues are found.

olint -c

This command lists detected linters and filters.

Supported Linters

Olint supports the following linters out of the box:

• bandit
• checkbashisms
• flake8
• jsonlint
• markdownlint
• pycodestyle
• pylint
• rslint
• shellcheck
• yamllint

Unwanted linters can be excluded, either by simply deleting the plugin file, or by skipping it in the global or the project config.

If the cmd for a linter is not found, that linter will be skipped.

New linters can be added by creating a definition file in the plugins folder, located where the global config file is, see below for details.

Configuration

olint first checks for a configuration file in the base configuration directory. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is defined, olint looks for the configuration file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/olint/olint.conf; otherwise, it checks ~/.config/olint/olint.conf.

Once this base configuration is parsed, olint examines the local project configuration file, .olint.conf, so this file overrides what is in the global config file.

Here's an example project configuration:

#!/bin/bash
# This is sourced. Fake bang-path to help editors and linters

skip_plugins+=(
    pycodestyle
    pylint
)

# Explicit excludes, give entire filename as listed by olint
excludes+=(
    services/sshd/ssh_defs/Deb10/etc_init.d_ssh
    #TODO.md
)

# Filter by prefix, as listed by olint
prefixes+=(
    local_tmux_conf/
    .pytest_cache/
)

# modify a linter's command line for this project
override_linter_cmd["bandit"]="bandit --skip B101"

Plugins

For each linter one plugin file must be defined, this should contain Bash style variable definitions and be saved in the folder plugins located in the same folder as the global config file.

Obligatory: plugin_cmd - what cmd to run

Sample:

plugin_cmd="checkbashisms -n -x"

Optionals

plugin_priority (default is 10)

If multiple plugins can handle the same file, they will be processed starting with the one with highest priority.

For example shellcheck has higher priority than checkbashisms, since if a script fails shellcheck, those issues should be addressed first.

If more than one plugin has the same priority, the order is left to olint.

Sample:

plugin_priority=20

plugin_extensions

Listing all file extensions the plugin can handle

Sample:

plugin_extensions=(
    .sh
    .bash
)

plugin_file_types

Lists all file types the plugin handles, defined as in the output of file -b filename. When processed this is comma-separated, so dont use the entire output in the definition!

Since some Operating Systems use only lowercase for this, the definitions are converted to lowercase for comparisons, and thus are case insensitive. Wildcards can be used.

Sample:

plugin_file_types=(
    "POSIX shell script*"
    "Bourne-Again shell script*"
)

.olint.cache

The .olint.cache file stores information about already linted files to optimize Olint's performance, each line in the cache file contains the file's modification time, date, and relative filepath, This means that after a first run, only changed files will be linted.

Contributing

Contributions to Olint are welcome! If you find a bug or have a feature request, please open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.