Sinter checks files for syntax errors. You can call it directly (on the command line, inside Vim, etc) or from a git pre-commit hook. It is not a style checker.
There are zillions of syntax-checking pre-commit hooks already. However all the ones I saw require modifying the hook whenever you modify your syntax checks. This is annoying to do even once, let alone when you have many repos.
With Sinter you never need to modify your hooks (after the initial installation), nor even sinter itself. To extend your syntax checks with a new filetype, just drop in a new linter. Sinter will automatically find it.
- Call directly or from pre-commit hook.
- Your pre-commit hook never changes once installed.
- The pre-commit hook lists all files with syntax errors, not just the first.
- Trivial to extend with new file types.
Clone the sinter repo.
Put the sinter script somewhere on your path. I symlink it into my ~/bin directory which is on my path:
ln -nfs /path/to/sinter/repo/sinter ~/bin/
Copy or symlink the pre-commit script into your repo's /git/hooks directory, or install as a git template. If you already have a pre-commit hook, you'll find it easy to combine the two manually.
The linters have these dependencies:
| Linter | Dependency |
|---|---|
| bash | bash |
| css | csslint |
| haml | haml |
| javascript | eslint |
| ruby | ruby |
| sass | sass |
| slim | slimrb |
| vimscript | vint |
| yaml | ruby |
To check a file:
sinter [-q] FILE
If FILE is syntactically correct sinter will output syntax ok. The exit code is 0.
If FILE has syntax errors sinter will output syntax error on stdout and the errors on stderr. The exit code is 1.
If sinter doesn't know how to check FILE it will output no linter for FILE. The exit code is 2.
The -q flag suppresses output.
To list the linters:
sinter --linters
To skip the pre-commit hook when committing:
git commit --no-verify
git commit -n
To check existing code:
git ls-files -z |
xargs -0 file --mime | # only process text files
awk -F":[ ]*" '$2 ~ /^text/ {print $1}' | # ditto
xargs -n1 sinter
Inside Vim:
nnoremap <leader>s :!sinter %<CR>
Linters reside in the linters/ directory.
To add a new linter write a script that:
- is named for the file type it checks;
- implements
is_foo():- it receives the filename, extension, and shebang as arguments
- it must exit with success or failure;
- implements
lint_foo():- it receives the full file path as an argument;
- it should write any syntax errors to stderr;
- it must exit with success or failure.
You do not need to update sinter or your pre-commit hooks.
To remove a linter, just delete it. You do not need to update sinter or your pre-commit hooks.
ochtra was the best commit hook I found, but I wanted something which could be run standalone and didn't require updating the hook itself whenever I extended the syntax checks.
Copyright Andrew Stewart, AirBlade Software.