ubuntu-lint

ubuntu-lint is a packaging linter for Ubuntu development. It is intended as a supplement to tools like lintian, and focuses on linting Ubuntu specific processes and conventions that arise frequently in code review. It can lint multiple types of input, including Debian source package directories, changelogs, and changes files.

There are a few ways to interact with ubuntu-lint:

• On the CLI with ubuntu-lint
• Directly in Python with the ubuntu_lint module
• As dput-ng hooks, which call into the Python module

ubuntu-lint CLI

The easiest way to get started is to run ubuntu-lint with no arguments from a Debian source package directory:

$ ubuntu-lint

When other arguments are passed, ubuntu-lint will infer context using the current directory, changelog, and a recently built changes file if present. Input context can be specified explicitly using the --changes-file=, --source-dir and --changelog flags. By default, ubuntu-lint will automatically select which lints to run. For example, if the target series of an upload is a stable release, additional SRU checks will run.

For each lint, foo-bar, there is a corresponding flag --foo-bar= to control how that lint will run. It accepts one of auto, off, warn, fail. If set to off, it will not run at all. If set to warn or fail, the check will run, and detected issues will be treated as a warning or failure, respectively. The default is auto.

Python module

The ubuntu_lint Python module implements each lint, which is a function that accepts a single Context object. To indicate an issue, the lint raises a LintException by calling Context.lint_fail, Context.lint_error, Context.lint_warn, or Context.lint_skip with a message describing the issue. The LintException object has a result attribute with a LintResult to indicate the result of the lint.

dput-ng hooks

Lints that operate on a changes file can trivially be used as a dput-ng hook. The ubuntu_lint.dput module provides simple wrappers that conform to dput-ng's excpectations, and the necessary JSON snippets are in dput.d.