Rules and RuleSets

« Introducing Matt! How to specify what to lint »

We have an initial design for how linting works.

Rules

The most detailed item is a Rule. It consists of either a regular expression or a rust function.

RuleSets

The next level up is RuleSet, which is a set of Rules (aren’t we good at naming things!). RuleSets can include other RuleSets, and can also exclude specific Rules.

There will be a standard library of Rules and RuleSets, and you can define your own. Well, just your own regex Rules, at least for now.

Tests

A Test is a set of Rules/RuleSets applied to files. When you run namelint, it will do a series of Tests on the directories you specify. You specify the list of Tests in a configuration file (namelint.conf by default).

Every file must be processed by at least one Test (or specifically ignored). This means bad files cannot sneak through by avoiding all Tests. Generally, you will just have a catch-all Test that applies some reasonable security rules.

We (the royal “We”, meaning Matt) made schemas for both types of files.