nvim-lint

An asynchronous linter plugin for Neovim (>= 0.6.0) complementary to the built-in Language Server Protocol support.

Motivation & Goals

With ale we already got an asynchronous linter, why write yet another one?

Because ale also includes its own language server client.

nvim-lint instead has a more narrow scope: It spawns linters, parses their output, and reports the results via the vim.diagnostic module.

nvim-lint complements the built-in language server client for languages where there are no language servers, or where standalone linters provide better results.

Installation

• Requires Neovim >= 0.6.0
• nvim-lint is a regular plugin and can be installed via the :h packages mechanism or via a plugin manager.

For example:

git clone \
    https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-lint.git
    ~/.config/nvim/pack/plugins/start/nvim-lint

• If using vim-plug: Plug 'mfussenegger/nvim-lint'
• If using packer.nvim: use 'mfussenegger/nvim-lint'

Usage

Configure the linters you want to run per file type. For example:

require('lint').linters_by_ft = {
  markdown = {'vale',}
}

Then setup a autocmd to trigger linting. For example:

au BufWritePost * lua require('lint').try_lint()

or with Lua autocmds (requires 0.7):

vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd({ "BufWritePost" }, {
  callback = function()
    require("lint").try_lint()
  end,
})

Some linters require a file to be saved to disk, others support linting stdin input. For such linters you could also define a more aggressive autocmd, for example on the InsertLeave or TextChanged events.

If you want to customize how the diagnostics are displayed, read :help vim.diagnostic.config.

Available Linters

There is a generic linter called compiler that uses the makeprg and errorformat options of the current buffer.

Other dedicated linters that are built-in are:

Tool	Linter name
Set via makeprg	compiler
actionlint	actionlint
alex	alex
ansible-lint	ansible_lint
bandit	bandit
bean-check	bean_check
biomejs	biomejs
blocklint	blocklint
buf_lint	buf_lint
buildifier	buildifier
cfn-lint	cfn_lint
cfn_nag	cfn_nag
checkpatch.pl	checkpatch
checkstyle	checkstyle
chktex	chktex
clang-tidy	clangtidy
clazy	clazy
clj-kondo	clj-kondo
cmakelint	cmakelint
codespell	codespell
commitlint	commitlint
cppcheck	cppcheck
cpplint	cpplint
credo	credo
cspell	cspell
curlylint	curlylint
dash	dash
deno	deno
djlint	djlint
dotenv-linter	dotenv_linter
editorconfig-checker	editorconfig-checker
erb-lint	erb_lint
ESLint	eslint
eslint_d	eslint_d
fennel	fennel
fish	fish
Flake8	flake8
flawfinder	flawfinder
gdlint (gdtoolkit)	gdlint
gitlint	gitlint
Golangci-lint	golangcilint
glslc	glslc
DirectX Shader Compiler	dxc
hadolint	hadolint
hlint	hlint
HTML Tidy	tidy
Inko	inko
janet	janet
joker	joker
jshint	jshint
jsonlint	jsonlint
ktlint	ktlint
lacheck	lacheck
Languagetool	languagetool
luacheck	luacheck
markdownlint	markdownlint
mlint	mlint
Mypy	mypy
Nix	nix
npm-groovy-lint	npm-groovy-lint
oelint-adv	oelint-adv
perlcritic	perlcritic
perlimports	perlimports
php	php
phpcs	phpcs
phpinsights	phpinsights
phpmd	phpmd
phpstan	phpstan
prisma-lint	prisma-lint
proselint	proselint
psalm	psalm
puppet-lint	puppet-lint
pycodestyle	pycodestyle
pydocstyle	pydocstyle
pyproject-flake8	pflake8
Pylint	pylint
Revive	revive
rflint	rflint
robocop	robocop
rstcheck	rstcheck
rstlint	rstlint
RPM	rpmspec
Ruby	ruby
RuboCop	rubocop
Ruff	ruff
Selene	selene
ShellCheck	shellcheck
snyk	snyk_iac
sqlfluff	sqlfluff
standardjs	standardjs
StandardRB	standardrb
statix check	statix
stylelint	stylelint
Solhint	solhint
typos	typos
Nagelfar	nagelfar
Vale	vale
Verilator	verilator
vint	vint
vulture	vulture
woke	woke
write-good	write_good
yamllint	yamllint
tfsec	tfsec
tlint	tlint
trivy	trivy
zsh	zsh
quick-lint-js	quick-lint-js

Custom Linters

You can register custom linters by adding them to the linters table, but please consider contributing a linter if it is missing.

require('lint').linters.your_linter_name = {
  cmd = 'linter_cmd',
  stdin = true, -- or false if it doesn't support content input via stdin. In that case the filename is automatically added to the arguments.
  append_fname = true, -- Automatically append the file name to `args` if `stdin = false` (default: true)
  args = {}, -- list of arguments. Can contain functions with zero arguments that will be evaluated once the linter is used.
  stream = nil, -- ('stdout' | 'stderr' | 'both') configure the stream to which the linter outputs the linting result.
  ignore_exitcode = false, -- set this to true if the linter exits with a code != 0 and that's considered normal.
  env = nil, -- custom environment table to use with the external process. Note that this replaces the *entire* environment, it is not additive.
  parser = your_parse_function
}

Instead of declaring the linter as a table, you can also declare it as a function which returns the linter table in case you want to dynamically generate some of the properties.

your_parse_function can be a function which takes two arguments:

• output
• bufnr

The output is the output generated by the linter command. The function must return a list of diagnostics as specified in :help diagnostic-structure.

You can override the environment that the linting process runs in by setting the env key, e.g.

env = { ["FOO"] = "bar" }

Note that this completely overrides the environment, it does not add new environment variables. The one exception is that the PATH variable will be preserved if it is not explicitly set.

You can generate a parse function from a Lua pattern or from an errorformat using the function in the lint.parser module:

from_errorformat

parser = require('lint.parser').from_errorformat(errorformat)

The function takes a single argument which is the errorformat.

from_pattern

parser = require('lint.parser').from_pattern(pattern, groups, severity_map, defaults, opts)

The function allows to parse the linter's output using a Lua regular expression pattern.

• pattern: The regular expression pattern applied on each line of the output
• groups: The groups specified by the pattern

Available groups:

• lnum
• end_lnum
• col
• end_col
• message
• file
• severity
• code

The order of the groups must match the order of the captures within the pattern. An example:

local pattern = '[^:]+:(%d+):(%d+):(%w+):(.+)'
local groups = { 'lnum', 'col', 'code', 'message' }

• severity: A mapping from severity codes to diagnostic codes

default_severity = {
['error'] = vim.diagnostic.severity.ERROR,
['warning'] = vim.diagnostic.severity.WARN,
['information'] = vim.diagnostic.severity.INFO,
['hint'] = vim.diagnostic.severity.HINT,
}

• defaults: The defaults diagnostic values

defaults = {["source"] = "mylint-name"}

• opts: Additional options

  • lnum_offset: Added to lnum. Defaults to 0
  • end_lnum_offset: Added to end_lnum. Defaults to 0
  • end_col_offset: offset added to end_col. Defaults to -1, assuming that the end-column position is exclusive.

Customize built-in linter parameters

You can import a linter and modify its properties. An example:

local phpcs = require('lint').linters.phpcs
phpcs.args = {
  '-q',
  -- <- Add a new parameter here
  '--report=json',
  '-'
}

Display configuration

See :help vim.diagnostic.config.

If you want to have different settings per linter, you can get the namespace for a linter via require("lint").get_namespace("linter_name"). An example:

local ns = require("lint").get_namespace("my_linter_name")
vim.diagnostic.config({ virtual_text = true }, ns)

Get the current running linters for your buffer

You can see which linters are running with require("lint").get_running(). To include the running linters in the status line you could format them like this:

local lint_progress = function()
  local linters = require("lint").get_running()
  if #linters == 0 then
      return "󰦕"
  end
  return "󱉶 " .. table.concat(linters, ", ")
end

Alternatives

• Ale
• efm-langserver
• diagnostic-languageserver

Development ☢️

Run tests

Running tests requires busted.

See neorocks or Using Neovim as Lua interpreter with Luarocks for installation instructions.

busted tests/