🔎 lintspec

Lintspec is a command-line utility (linter) that checks the completeness and validity of NatSpec doc-comments in Solidity code. It is focused on speed and ergonomics. By default, lintspec will respect gitignore rules when looking for Solidity source files.

Dual-licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.

Note: the main branch can contain unreleased changes. To view the README information for the latest stable release, visit crates.io or select the latest git tag from the branch/tag dropdown.

Installation

Via cargo

cargo install lintspec

Via cargo-binstall

cargo binstall lintspec

Via nix

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.lintspec
# or
nix-shell -p lintspec
# or
nix run nixpkgs#lintspec

Pre-built binaries and install script

Head over to the releases page!

Legacy slang Backend

Although the default parser backend is now the very fast solar, the legacy slang parser is still available when installing with cargo install.

cargo install lintspec --no-default-features -F cli,slang

This feature exposes an additional CLI flag --skip-version-detection which can help if slang doesn't support the version of Solidity you target. Note that enabling slang makes the program ~7x slower than with the default features.

Usage

Usage: lintspec [OPTIONS] [PATH]... [COMMAND]

Commands:
  init         Create a `.lintspec.toml` config file with default values
  completions  Generate shell completion scripts
  help         Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Arguments:
  [PATH]...  One or more paths to files and folders to analyze

Options:
  -e, --exclude <EXCLUDE>        Path to a file or folder to exclude (can be used more than once)
      --config <CONFIG>          Optional path to a TOML config file
  -o, --out <OUT>                Write output to a file instead of stderr
      --inheritdoc               Enforce that all public and external items have `@inheritdoc`
      --inheritdoc-override      Enforce that `override` internal functions and modifiers have `@inheritdoc`
      --notice-or-dev            Do not distinguish between `@notice` and `@dev` when considering "required" validation rules
      --title-ignored <TYPE>     Ignore `@title` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --title-required <TYPE>    Enforce `@title` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --title-forbidden <TYPE>   Forbid `@title` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --author-ignored <TYPE>    Ignore `@author` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --author-required <TYPE>   Enforce `@author` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --author-forbidden <TYPE>  Forbid `@author` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --notice-ignored <TYPE>    Ignore `@notice` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --notice-required <TYPE>   Enforce `@notice` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --notice-forbidden <TYPE>  Forbid `@notice` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --dev-ignored <TYPE>       Ignore `@dev` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --dev-required <TYPE>      Enforce `@dev` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --dev-forbidden <TYPE>     Forbid `@dev` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --param-ignored <TYPE>     Ignore `@param` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --param-required <TYPE>    Enforce `@param` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --param-forbidden <TYPE>   Forbid `@param` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --return-ignored <TYPE>    Ignore `@return` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --return-required <TYPE>   Enforce `@return` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --return-forbidden <TYPE>  Forbid `@return` for these items (can be used more than once)
      --json                     Output diagnostics in JSON format
      --compact                  Compact output
      --sort                     Sort the results by file path
  -h, --help                     Print help (see more with '--help')
  -V, --version                  Print version

Configuration

Config File

Create a default configuration with the following command:

lintspec init

This will create a .lintspec.toml file with the default configuration in the current directory. Check out the example file for more information.

All items for which the default configuration suits you can be removed from the file if desired. Note that some settings could change their default value in the future (in a new major release) which could alter behavior if they are not specified.

Environment Variables

Environment variables (in capitals, with the LS_ prefix) can also be used and take precedence over the configuration file. They use the same names as in the TOML config file and use the _ character as delimiter for nested items. An additional LS_CONFIG_PATH variable is available to set an optional path to the TOML file (the default is ./.lintspec.toml).

Examples:

• LS_CONFIG_PATH=.config/lintspec.toml
• LS_LINTSPEC_PATHS=[src,test]
• LS_LINTSPEC_INHERITDOC=false
• LS_LINTSPEC_NOTICE_OR_DEV=true: if the setting name contains _, it is not considered a delimiter
• LS_OUTPUT_JSON=true
• LS_CONSTRUCTOR_NOTICE=required

CLI Arguments

Finally, the tool can be customized with command-line arguments, which take precedence over the other two methods. To see the CLI usage information, run:

lintspec help

Usage in GitHub Actions

You can check your code in CI with the lintspec GitHub Action. Any .lintspec.toml or .nsignore file in the repository's root will be used to configure the execution.

The action generates annotations that are displayed in the source files when viewed (e.g. in a PR's "Files" tab).

Options

The following options are available for the action (all are optional if a config file is present):

Input	Default Value	Description	Example
working-directory	"./"	Working directory path	"./src"
paths	"[]"	Paths to scan, relative to the working directory, in square brackets and separated by commas. Required unless a .lintspec.toml file is present in the working directory.	"[path/to/file.sol,test/test.sol]"
exclude	"[]"	Paths to exclude, relative to the working directory, in square brackets and separated by commas	"[path/to/exclude,other/path.sol]"
extra-args		Extra arguments passed to the lintspec command	"--inheritdoc=false"
version	"latest"	Version of lintspec to use. For enhanced security, you can pin this to a fixed version	"0.9.0"
fail-on-problem	"true"	Whether the action should fail when NatSpec problems have been found. Disabling this only creates annotations for found problems, but succeeds	"false"

Example Workflow

name: Lintspec

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  lintspec:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: beeb/[email protected]
        # all the lines below are optional
        with:
          working-directory: "./"
          paths: "[]"
          exclude: "[]"
          extra-args: ""
          version: "latest"
          fail-on-problem: "true"

Usage as a Library

lintspec can be used as a library, in which case the Solidity parser and CLI-specific dependencies are optional.

cargo add --no-default-features lintspec

Alternatively, in Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
lintspec = { version = "0.11.1", default-features = false }

Feature flags

All feature flags are optional when used as a library. To compile the binary, at least the cli flag and one of the parser flags must be enabled.

• cli: enables compilation as a binary and provides the required dependencies (default)
• solar: enables the solar_parse parser backend (default)
• slang: enables the slang_solidity parser backend

Credits

This tool walks in the footsteps of natspec-smells, thanks to them for inspiring this project!

Comparison with natspec-smells

Benchmark

On a regular laptop with 16 cores, linting the Uniswap/v4-core src folder on linux, lintspec v0.11.2 is about 1600x faster, or 0.06% of the execution time:

Benchmark 1: npx @defi-wonderland/natspec-smells --include 'src/**/*.sol' --enforceInheritdoc --constructorNatspec
  Time (mean ± σ):     13.192 s ±  0.674 s    [User: 15.365 s, System: 0.507 s]
  Range (min … max):   12.405 s … 14.110 s    10 runs

Benchmark 2: lintspec src --compact --param-required struct
  Time (mean ± σ):       8.0 ms ±   1.0 ms    [User: 16.8 ms, System: 8.8 ms]
  Range (min … max):     5.9 ms …  11.3 ms    281 runs

Summary
  lintspec src --compact --param-required struct ran
  1658.70 ± 222.21 times faster than npx @defi-wonderland/natspec-smells --include 'src/**/*.sol' --enforceInheritdoc --constructorNatspec

Features

Feature	lintspec	natspec-smells
Identify missing NatSpec	✅	✅
Identify duplicate NatSpec	✅	✅
Include files/folders	✅	✅
Exclude files/folders	✅	✅
Enforce usage of @inheritdoc	✅	✅
Enforce NatSpec on constructors	✅	✅
Configure via config file	✅	✅
Configure via env variables	✅	❌
Respects gitignore files	✅	❌
Granular validation rules	✅	❌
Pretty output with code excerpt	✅	❌
JSON output	✅	❌
Output to file	✅	❌
Multithreaded	✅	❌
Built-in CI action	✅	❌
No pre-requisites (node/npm)	✅	❌