Splint is a Clojure linter focused on style and code shape. It aims to warn about many of the guidelines in the Clojure Style Guide. It is inspired by the Ruby linter RuboCop and the Clojure linter Kibit.
More explicit instructions can be found in the installation, usage, and configuration pages, but here's a quick rundown:
:aliases {:splint {:extra-deps {io.github.noahtheduke/splint {:mvn/version "1.15.1"}
org.clojure/clojure {:mvn/version "1.11.1"}}
:main-opts ["-m" "noahtheduke.splint"]}}Run with clojure -M:splint [args...].
Add this to project.clj:
:profiles {:dev {:dependencies [[io.github.noahtheduke/splint "1.15.1"]
[org.clojure/clojure "1.11.1"]]}}
:aliases {"splint" ["run" "-m" "noahtheduke.splint"]})Run with lein splint [args...].
Why another Clojure linter? We have clj-kondo, eastwood, and kibit, in addition to clojure-lsp's capabilities built on top of clj-kondo. I have contributed to most of these, and recently took over maintenance of kibit. However, most of them aren't built to be easily modifiable, and while kibit's rules are simple, the underlying engine (built on core.logic) is quite slow. This means that adding or updating the various linting rules can be quite frustrating and taxing.
Inspired by RuboCop, I decided to try something new: A "fast enough" linting engine based on linting code shape, built to be easily extended.
For speed and simplicity, Splint doesn't run any code, it only works on the provided code as text. As such, it doesn't understand macros or perform any macro-expansion (unlike Eastwood) so it can only lint a given macro call, not the resulting code.
clj-kondo performs lexical analysis and can output usage and binding information, such as unused or incorrectly defined vars. At this time, Splint makes no such efforts. It is only focused on code shape, not code intent or meaning.
Versions are not semantic, they are incremental. Splint is not meant to be infrastructure, so don't rely on it like infrastructure; it is a helpful development tool. It should not be relied on as a library. I make no guarantees about public API, visibility of functions, consistency of data shape, or otherwise. I hope to maintain consistent json and edn output so users can expect that to stay the same, but everything inside of Splint should be considered implementation detail.
$ tokei
===============================================================================
Language Files Lines Code Comments Blanks
===============================================================================
Clojure 172 122744 111266 4421 7057
ClojureC 4 1013 851 36 126
ClojureScript 48 14220 13184 142 894
$ time lein kibit
...
real 34m30.395s
user 35m4.952s
sys 0m2.995s
$ time splint .
...
Linting took 5622ms, checked 223 files, 804 style warnings
real 0m5.969s
user 0m47.830s
sys 0m0.379s
Copyright © Noah Bogart
Distributed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0.
