Linthub: Static code analysis for GitHub pull requests | Hacker News Reader

Linthub: Static code analysis for GitHub pull requests

linthub.io

70 pointsnl587434 comments

Instead of using a service like this one (or Hound) that comments directly on pull requests, we chose to integrate the same tools in our build process with Phare (https://github.com/mirego/phare), a command-line tool we built which runs Rubocop, JSHint, JSCS, etc. and exits with a global status.

If the code has coding style violations, the build breaks. Exactly like it would if we pushed a failing test.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the noise generated by comments about coding style on pull requests.

There's an obvious trade-off here, though. For example, why stop at basic lint-style checks? You could make a static analyzer part of the build process and fail the build when a defect is detected. The trade-off is the same as with growing a test suite that always runs: Over time, your build times increase, and that makes development tedious.

There's a balance to be found between core checks that run at build time, and additional, more extensive checks, which run automatically and asynchronously (!) once a developer believes their changes to be good enough. Both things have their place in a proper software development flow.

+1 for "lint errors fail the build"

If you also add "and any coding style things you care about, you have to make the linter check for", then you don't have to waste any time on that stuff in the pull request.

GitLab B.V. CEO here. Totally agree that lint errors should fail the build instead of commenting. Otherwise all the people /cc't in the pull/merge request get all the hound comments in their email. And the nice thing about Rubocop https://github.com/bbatsov/rubocop is that you can disable tests easily. With GitLab we initially had: 406 files inspected, 1609 offenses detected. But after selecting only the most important checks and a day of fixing we got a green build.

Same for me. I used Hound for a while but it was annoying to see all this comments. So I just added Rubocop check inside `rake test` so build is broken if you have code style issues

I guess the advantage of Linthub over Phare is that it can run on pull requests made by external contributors.

Actually, it does in a certain way. Travis runs builds (tests + Phare) for all pull requests (eg. https://travis-ci.org/mirego/encore/pull_requests) so we know if pull requests made by external contributors "break the build".

Yes, true, but only if it breaks. This enforces common code quality issues, so it will run side-to-side with travis.

In all my projects (and the projects I contribute to), style issues are a build-breaking defect.

In Python this usually means running flake8 as a Travis job.

This is exactly why we've develop this. To enforce code quality to pull requests and save the repository owners time.

I think he's commenting on the approach of how the system reports, not its usefulness. Have you considered bundling up the results as a second commit status[1] rather than making comments?

1: https://github.com/blog/1935-see-results-from-all-pull-reque...

Adding a commit status would be nice. It'd fail whilst the most recent commit has had a commit-comment on it.

The commit status have been added :-).

That was quick. Awesome! Do you have a sample pull with the new setup?

This looks pretty awesome and will just get better as more languages get supported. But, it comments on commits, not on the diff in the PR. I think commeting on the diff looks nicer (you see code snippet with the comment) and in my opinion it's also easyer to find all the comments that way. Instead of clicking the commit hash on the commen each time.

Thanks! Will check and handle this.

The release with commenting on pull requests is active now. Linthubot will comment on the pull request itself instead of the commit.

Added Python and Ruby support btw. Supporting 9 languages now.

There is a free open source alternative written in Python: https://github.com/justinabrahms/imhotep

It runs on the commit diff with a specified linting tool (used it with pep8 and jshint), it is also fairly easy to add new linters.

Here's a fork that works nicely with Travis: https://github.com/glowdigitalmedia/imhotep

So this is like Hound[1]? - I am (kinda) building something for PHP, Anorak[2] which uses something else I built.

What's your plan on this? I'd like to use it for our private repositories.

Edit: My web hooks are returning errors. I'll submit some feedback.

[1] https://houndci.com

[2] https://github.com/jbrooksuk/anorak

It seems comparable, though we are supporting different languages. Plans are to support a lot more languages, and support private repos also. (Actually they are already supported, but linthubot needs to have read only access to the repository). All feedback is welcome.

Thanks! Are you planning on charging for this? I have an error, can I email you guys?

Edit: Nevermind, I found the support form.

Currently no plans for charging. If we'll change these plans, existing repositories will stay free. Send an email to support@linthub.io for the error, and we'll check it immediatly.

Error should be fixed, was an error due to redirect http to https.

Similar services:

https://houndci.com/ http://scrutinizer-ci.com/ http://landscape.io/ http://codeclimate.com/

Also: https://www.codacy.com :)

I've been working another alternative; https://github.com/jbrooksuk/anorak

Does anyone know how these services stack up against each other? I use CodeClimate and it rocks, but I'm curious about how the others work.

I may be biased as I made Landscape.io, but it rocks too!

Are there any opensource tools that do the same thing( like reek for ruby) ?

I would like to use something like this at work but we don't host code on github.

Try RuboCop for ruby.

Does github not have granular enough permissions to allo commenting on pull requests without granting write access to a repo?

Yeah, true. We've tightened the scope, read/write is not necessary any longer. Only for private repo's, the linthubot user needs to be added to the repo with read access.

This look awesome! But there are a lot of similar services such as codeclimate.

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