Feature Request: Add ChkTeX LaTeX Linter

[Inventrohyder]

Feature Request: Add ChkTeX Linter for LaTeX Files

Summary

I'd like to contribute a ChkTeX linter plugin for LaTeX (.tex) files. ChkTeX finds typographic and stylistic errors in LaTeX documents and is widely used in the LaTeX community.

Current State

• I have a working implementation in my local trunk.yaml that uses regex output parsing
• The latex file type already exists in linters/plugin.yaml
• ChkTeX supports over 40 warnings and is configurable via .chktexrc

Questions for the Team

1. Distribution Strategy
ChkTeX is typically installed via system package managers (brew, apt, pacman). I see two approaches used in your repo:

• Option A (System-only): Like pragma-once - require system installation, no downloads section
• Option B (Hosted binaries): Like clang-tidy - trunk.io hosts prebuilt binaries

Which approach would be preferred for community-contributed linters?

2. CI Environment
Will trunk-io/plugins CI have ChkTeX available for testing, or should tests skip if ChkTeX isn't installed?

3. Future Binary Mirror
Would trunk.io be open to a future enhancement where I create a chktex-binaries GitHub repository with GitHub Actions to build cross-platform binaries? This would enable automatic downloads similar to clang-tidy.

Proposed Implementation

# linters/chktex/plugin.yaml
version: 0.1
lint:
  definitions:
    - name: chktex
      files: [latex]
      description: Finds typographic errors in LaTeX
      commands:
        - name: lint
          output: regex
          batch: true
          read_output_from: stdout
          parse_regex: (?P<path>.*):(?P<line>\d+):(?P<col>\d+):(?P<code>\d+):(?P<severity>\w+):(?P<message>.*)
          run: |
            sh -c 'chktex --quiet --verbosity=0 --format "%f:%l:%c:%n:%k:%m__NEWLINE__" ${target}'
          success_codes: [0, 2, 3]
          parser:
            run: sed "s/__NEWLINE__/\n/g"
      direct_configs: [.chktexrc]
      issue_url_format: http://www.nongnu.org/chktex/ChkTeX_Manual.pdf
      known_good_version: "1.7.9"
      suggest_if: files_present
      version_command:
        parse_regex: ChkTeX v${semver}
        run: chktex --version

Key Technical Notes

• ChkTeX binary only needs libc, ncurses, pcre2 - does NOT require a full TeX distribution
• Exit codes: 0=clean, 2=warnings found, 3=errors found
• Uses custom format string for parseable output

Related Context

• ChkTeX Official Site
• ChkTeX 1.7.9 Manual
• Similar approach to j2kun/chktex-action GitHub Action

I'm happy to submit a PR once I have guidance on the distribution approach. Thank you!