Lint checking for common mistakes?

[jb55]

Off the top of my head:

• rapidcheck: init at unstable-2018-09-27 nixpkgs#48048 (comment)
• with stdenv.lib
• make flags set in attribute vs inline buildPhase

Any other common ones?

Maybe not mistakes specifically, but common conventions.

[jtojnar]

It would be useful to have a linter as a standalone tool. Perhaps it could be integrated to @Synthetica9’s nix-linter.

---

Here are some other occasions I repeatedly comment on:

• When known build tool/setup hook is in buildInputs instead of nativeBuildInputs
  • cmake, ninja, meson, autoconf, automake, libtool, intltool, gettext, appstream-glib, gobject-introspection, wrapGAppsHook, wrapQtAppsHook…
• When a patch is added to patches but no comment describing it is nearby.
• When using improbable package variant (e.g. gtk3-x11 – here we could check if the source actually depends on this rather than gtk3)
• When patch file is added to nixpkgs (suggest fetchpatch)
• When fetching from git with rev=${commithash} but ${version} ≠ unstable-yyyy-mm-dd
• When fetching from git with rev=refs/tags/${version} (replace with rev=${version})
• When name="foo-${version}" is used. Suggest pname
• When unquoted URLs are used ([RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax rfcs#45, not nixpkgs specific)
• When hardcoded phases like buildPhase or installPhase invoking make are used (suggest makeFlags)
• When hardcoded phases are used but they lack runHook

For new packages:

• Check that meta.maintainers is present
• Check that meta.license is present
• Check that meta.platforms is present

[davidak]

@jtojnar great list. I created an issue at Synthetica9/nix-linter#30.

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/avoiding-targets-of-past-treewide-fixes/5494/2