Ameba

Code style linter for Crystal

^{(a single-celled animal that catches food and moves about by extending fingerlike projections of protoplasm)}

About

Ameba is a static code analysis tool for the Crystal language. It enforces a consistent Crystal code style, also catches code smells and wrong code constructions.

See also Roadmap.

Usage

Run ameba binary within your project directory to catch code issues:

$ ameba
Inspecting 107 files.

...............F.....................F....................................................................

src/ameba/formatter/flycheck_formatter.cr:4:33
[W] Lint/UnusedArgument: Unused argument `location`
> source.issues.each do |e, location|
                            ^

src/ameba/formatter/base_formatter.cr:12:7
[W] Lint/UselessAssign: Useless assignment to variable `s`
> return s += issues.size
         ^

Finished in 542.64 milliseconds

129 inspected, 2 failures.

Installation

As a project dependency:

Add this to your application's shard.yml:

development_dependencies:
  ameba:
    github: crystal-ameba/ameba
    version: ~> 0.10.1

Build bin/ameba binary within your project directory while running shards install.

You may also want to use it on Travis:

# .travis.yml
language: crystal
install:
  - shards install
script:
  - crystal spec
  - crystal bin/ameba.cr

Using this config Ameba will inspect files just after the specs run. Travis will also fail the build if some problems detected.

OS X

$ brew tap veelenga/tap
$ brew install ameba

Docker

Build the image:

$ docker build -t ameba/ameba .

To use the resulting image on a local source folder, mount the current (or target) directory into /src:

$ docker run -v $(pwd):/src ameba/ameba

From sources

$ git clone https://github.com/crystal-ameba/ameba && cd ameba
$ make install

Configuration

Default configuration file is .ameba.yml. It allows to configure rule properties, disable specific rules and exclude sources from the rules.

Generate new file by running ameba --gen-config.

Only/Except

One or more rules, or a one or more group of rules can be included or excluded via command line arguments:

$ ameba --only   Lint/Syntax # runs only Lint/Syntax rule
$ ameba --only   Style,Lint  # runs only rules from Style and Lint groups
$ ameba --except Lint/Syntax # runs all rules except Lint/Syntax
$ ameba --except Style,Lint  # runs all rules except rules in Style and Lint groups

Explanation

Ameba allows you to dig deeper into an issue, by showing you details about the issue and the reasoning by it being reported.

To be convenient, you can just copy-paste the PATH:line:column string from the report and paste behind the ameba command to check it out.

$ ameba crystal/command/format.cr:26:83           # show explanation for the issue
$ ameba --explain crystal/command/format.cr:26:83 # same thing

Inline disabling

One or more rules or one or more group of rules can be disabled using inline directives:

# ameba:disable Style/LargeNumbers
time = Time.epoch(1483859302)

time = Time.epoch(1483859302) # ameba:disable Style/LargeNumbers, Lint/UselessAssign

time = Time.epoch(1483859302) # ameba:disable Style, Lint

Editor integration

• Vim: vim-crystal, Ale
• Emacs: ameba.el
• Sublime Text: Sublime Linter Ameba
• VSCode: vscode-crystal-ameba

Credits & inspirations

• Crystal Language
• Rubocop
• Credo
• Dogma

Contributors

• veelenga Vitalii Elenhaupt - creator, maintainer