1. Deprecation note
2. Bug reports / GitHub issues
3. Submitting a patch
4. General style notes
5. Syntax checker notes
This project is no longer maintained. If you need a syntax checking plugin for Vim you might be interested in Syntastic's spiritual succesor, ALE. Although it shares no code with syntastic and it takes a very different approach to design, ALE can be considered a natural evolution of syntastic in terms of goals and functionality. Check it out, you probably won't be disappointed.
Please note that the preferred channel for posting bug reports is the issue tracker at GitHub. Reports posted elsewhere are less likely to be seen by the core team.
When reporting a bug make sure you search the existing GitHub issues
for the same/similar issues. If you find one, feel free to add a +1
comment with any additional information that may help us solve the
issue.
When creating a new issue be sure to state the following:
- steps to reproduce the bug;
- the version of Vim you are using (run
:ver
to find out); - the version of syntastic you are using (see
:SyntasticInfo
).
For syntax checker bugs also state the version of the checker executable that you are using. Adding debugging information is typically useful too:
- open a file handled by your checker;
- set
g:syntastic_debug
to 1 or 3; - run the checker;
- copy the output of
:mes
.
Before you consider adding features to syntastic, please spend a few minutes (re-)reading the latest version of the manual. Syntastic is changing rapidly at times, and it's possible that some features you want to add exist already.
To submit a patch:
- fork the repo on GitHub;
- make a topic branch and start hacking;
- submit a pull request based off your topic branch.
Small, focused patches are preferred.
Large changes to the code should be discussed with the core team first. Create an issue and explain your plan and see what we say.
Also, make sure to update the manual whenever applicable. Nobody can use features that aren't documented.
Follow the coding conventions/styles used in the syntastic core:
- use 4 space indents;
- don't use abbreviated keywords - e.g. use
endfunction
, notendfun
(there's always room for more fun!); - don't use
l:
prefixes for variables unless actually required (i.e. almost never); - code for maintainability; we would rather a function be a couple of lines longer and have (for example) some explaining variables to aid readability.
Make sure to read the guide if you plan to add new syntax checkers.
Use the existing checkers as templates, rather than writing everything from scratch.
The preferred style for error format strings is one "clause" per line.
E.g. (from the coffee
checker):
let errorformat =
\ '%E%f:%l:%c: %trror: %m,' .
\ 'Syntax%trror: In %f\, %m on line %l,' .
\ '%EError: In %f\, Parse error on line %l: %m,' .
\ '%EError: In %f\, %m on line %l,' .
\ '%W%f(%l): lint warning: %m,' .
\ '%W%f(%l): warning: %m,' .
\ '%E%f(%l): SyntaxError: %m,' .
\ '%-Z%p^,' .
\ '%-G%.%#'