A linting framework for Bazel

You must load and configure the linting framework before anything else. This is because later rulesets that depend on the linting framework will attempt to ensure that linters are configured by registering no-op implmentations of lint configs. You can do this by:

# WORKSPACE

load("@apple_rules_lint//lint:repositories.bzl", "lint_deps")

lint_deps()

load("@apple_rules_lint//lint:setup.bzl", "lint_setup")

lint_setup({
    "java-checkstyle": "//your:checkstyle-config",
})

Alternatively, using Bzlmod:

# MODULE.bazel
bazel_dep(name = "apple_rules_lint", version = "0.1.1")

linter = use_extension("@apple_rules_lint//lint:extensions.bzl", "linter")
linter.configure(name = "java-checkstyle", config = "//your:checkstyle-config")

You may override specific lint configurations on a per-package basis by:

# BUILD.bazel

load("@apple_rules_lint//lint:defs.bzl", "package_lint_config")

package_lint_config({
    "java-checkstyle": ":alternative-checkstyle-config",
})

Can be found in the api docs

To add linter support to your repo, add this to...

# repositories.bzl
load("@apple_rules_lint//lint:repositories.bzl", "lint_deps")

lint_deps()

Then add this to...

# setup.bzl
load("@apple_rules_lint//lint:setup.bzl", "ruleset_lint_setup")

ruleset_lint_setup()

Add:

# MODULE.bazel

bazel_dep(name = "apple_rules_lint", version = "0.1.1")

linter = use_extension("@apple_rules_lint//lint:extensions.bzl", "linter")
linter.register(name = "java-checkstyle")

To obtain the currently configured config for a ruleset, use:

# your_rules.bzl

load("@apple_rules_lint//lint:defs.bzl", "get_lint_config")

config = get_lint_config("java-checkstyle", tags)
if config != None:
    # set up lint targets
    pass

Where tags are the tags of the rule to check.

For the sake of this example, we'll show how apple_rules_lint is integrated with the Selenium project, but the same process can be followed for any linter:

1. Wrap the linter with a _test rule, so you can run them with bazel test. In Selenium, this is the spotbugs_test

2. It is recommended, but not required, that your test return a LinterInfo so that other tooling can detect whether this is a lint test.

3. Create a config rule or a marker rule of some sort. For example, spotbugs_config

4. Pick a "well known" name: lang-tool seems to work well (such as java-spotbugs, but you might have go-gofmt or py-black)

5. Create a macro that uses get_lint_config to look up the config for you. If that's present, create a new instance of your test rule. You can see this in action here.

6. As you write code, make sure your macro is called. If you're a ruleset author, this can be as lightweight as exporting the macro created above as the default way to call your rules.

7. ...

8. Profit!

Users can then use the "well known" name to point to an instance of the config rule in their WORKSPACE files:

lint_setup({
    "java-spotbugs": "//java:spotbugs-config",
})