package-lint

This library provides a linter for the metadata in Emacs Lisp files which are intended to be packages. You can integrate it into your build process.

package-lint detects various issues that may make your package uninstallable or unusable for some users, and it warns about significant deviations from the Elisp coding conventions, such as non-compliant symbol naming, and use of reserved keybindings. Among other community uses, package-lint is a prerequisite for submission of packages to MELPA.

package-lint can be used standalone, but see also the flycheck-package and package-lint-flymake packages, which both use package-lint to conveniently display packaging errors directly in the buffer while writing elisp packages.

Installation

The recommended way to get package-lint is as a package from the MELPA repository. The version of package-lint there will always be up-to-date. There are also packages in MELPA Stable, which track the latest numbered tag.

Usage

Use the command package-lint-current-buffer interactively, or use package-lint-buffer if linting programmatically.

If you're a package author, you can include package-lint in your build process by ensuring that the package is installed, and then using the function package-lint-batch-and-exit to lint your files -- see run-tests.sh in this repo for an example.

Roadmap

Additional checks for future versions:

WARN: header line formatting / capitalisation
trailing line presence / formatting
WARN: library is called *-mode but doesn't provide a major mode
checkdoc failures for interactive functions / defcustoms
trailing whitespace?
themes which aren't in a matching *-theme.el file
use of unsafe local variables
local variable set in header line
using commentary to talk about load[- ]path and installation
lack of autoloads
references to README files which won't be bundled in a package
use of CamelCase identifiers
Defining a -mode function directly instead of using define-derived-mode or define-minor-mode
Referring to display-graphic-p or window-system in -theme.el files