rust/doc/adding_lints.md

Adding a new lint

You are probably here because you want to add a new lint to Clippy. If this is the first time you're contributing to Clippy, this document guides you through creating an example lint from scratch.

To get started, we will create a lint that detects functions called foo, because that's clearly a non-descriptive name.

• Testing
• Lint declaration
• Lint passes
• Emitting a lint
• Adding the lint logic
• Documentation
• Debugging
• PR Checklist
• Cheatsheet

Testing

Let's write some tests first that we can execute while we iterate on our lint.

Clippy uses UI tests for testing. UI tests check that the output of Clippy is exactly as expected. Each test is just a plain Rust file that contains the code we want to check. The output of Clippy is compared against a .stderr file.

Let's create the test file at tests/ui/foo_functions.rs. It doesn't really matter what the file is called, but it's a good convention to name it after the lint it is testing, so foo_functions.rs it is.

Inside we put some examples to get started:

#![warn(clippy::foo_functions)]

// Impl methods
struct A;
impl A {
    pub fn fo(&self) {}
    pub fn foo(&self) {}
    pub fn food(&self) {}
}

// Default trait methods
trait B {
    pub fn fo(&self) {}
    pub fn foo(&self) {}
    pub fn food(&self) {}
}

// Plain functions
fn fo() {}
fn foo() {}
fn food() {}

fn main() {
    // We also don't want to lint method calls
    foo();
    let a = A;
    a.foo();
}

Now we can run the test with TESTNAME=ui/foo_functions cargo uitest. Currently this test will fail. If you go through the output you will see that we have to add some missing imports to our lint file.

While you are working on implementing your lint, you can keep running the UI test. That allows you to check if the output is turning into what you want.

Once you are satisfied with the output, you need to run tests/ui/update-all-references.sh to update the stderr file for your lint. Running TESTNAME=ui/foo_functions cargo uitest should pass then. When you commit your lint, be sure to commit the *.stderr files, too.

Let's have a look at implementing our lint now.

Lint declaration

We start by creating a new file in the clippy_lints crate. That's the crate where all the lint code is. We are going to call the file clippy_lints/src/foo_functions.rs and import some initial things we need:

use rustc::lint::{LintArray, LintPass};
use rustc::{declare_tool_lint, lint_array};

The next step is to provide a lint declaration. Lints are declared using the declare_clippy_lint! macro:

declare_clippy_lint! {
    pub FOO_FUNCTIONS,
    pedantic,
    "function named `foo`, which is not a descriptive name"
}

• FOO_FUNCTIONS is the name of our lint. Be sure to follow the lint naming guidelines here when naming your lint. In short, the name should state the thing that is being checked for and read well when used with allow/warn/deny.
• pedantic sets the lint level to Allow. The exact mapping can be found here
• The last part should be a text that explains what exactly is wrong with the code

With our lint declaration done, we will now make sure that our lint declaration is assigned to a lint pass:

// clippy_lints/src/foo_functions.rs

// .. imports and lint declaration ..

#[derive(Copy, Clone)]
pub struct FooFunctionsPass;

impl LintPass for FooFunctionsPass {
    fn get_lints(&self) -> LintArray {
        lint_array!(
            FOO_FUNCTIONS,
        )
    }

    fn name(&self) -> &'static str {
        "FooFunctions"
    }
}

Don't worry about the name method here. As long as it includes the name of the lint pass it should be fine.

Next you should run util/dev update_lints to register the lint in various places, mainly in clippy_lints/src/lib.rs.

While update_lints automates some things, it doesn't automate everything. We will have to register our lint pass manually in the register_plugins function in clippy_lints/src/lib.rs:

reg.register_early_lint_pass(box foo_functions::FooFunctionsPass);

Without that, running the UI tests would produce an error like unknown clippy lint: clippy::foo_functions. The next decision we have to make is which lint pass our lint is going to need.

Lint passes

Writing a lint that just checks for the name of a function means that we just have to deal with the AST and don't have to deal with the type system at all. This is good, because it makes writing this particular lint less complicated.

We have to make this decision with every new Clippy lint. It boils down to using either EarlyLintPass or LateLintPass. This is a result of Rust's compilation process. You can read more about it in the rustc guide.

In short, the LateLintPass has access to type information while the EarlyLintPass doesn't. If you don't need access to type information, use the EarlyLintPass. The EarlyLintPass is also faster. However linting speed hasn't really been a concern with Clippy so far.

Since we don't need type information for checking the function name, we are going to use the EarlyLintPass. It has to be imported as well, changing our imports to:

use rustc::lint::{LintArray, LintPass, EarlyLintPass, EarlyContext};
use rustc::{declare_tool_lint, lint_array};

Emitting a lint

With UI tests in place, we can start working on the implementation of the lint logic. We can keep executing the tests until we make them pass.

Let's start by implementing the EarlyLintPass for our FooFunctionsPass:

impl EarlyLintPass for FooFunctionsPass {
    fn check_fn(&mut self, cx: &EarlyContext<'_>, fn_kind: FnKind<'_>, _: &FnDecl, span: Span, _: NodeId) {
        // TODO: Emit lint here
    }
}

We implement the check_fn method from the EarlyLintPass trait. This gives us access to various information about the function that is currently being checked. More on that in the next section. Let's worry about the details later and emit our lint for every function definition first.

Depending on how complex we want our lint message to be, we can choose from a variety of lint emission functions. They can all be found in clippy_lints/src/utils/diagnostics.rs.

impl EarlyLintPass for Pass {
    fn check_fn(&mut self, cx: &EarlyContext<'_>, _: FnKind<'_>, _: &FnDecl, span: Span, _: NodeId) {
        span_help_and_lint(
            cx,
            FOO_FUNCTIONS,
            span,
            "function named `foo`",
            "consider using a more meaningful name"
        );
    }
}

Adding the lint logic

Writing the logic for your lint will most likely be different from this example, so this section is kept rather short.

Using the check_fn method gives us access to FnKind that has two relevant variants for us FnKind::ItemFn and FnKind::Method. Both provide access to the name of the function/method via an Ident.

With that we can expand our check_fn method to:

impl EarlyLintPass for Pass {
    fn check_fn(&mut self, cx: &EarlyContext<'_>, fn_kind: FnKind<'_>, _: &FnDecl, span: Span, _: NodeId) {
        if !is_foo_fn(fn_kind) { return; }
        span_help_and_lint(
            cx,
            FOO_FUNCTIONS,
            span,
            "function named `foo`",
            "consider using a more meaningful name"
        );
    }
}

We separate the lint conditional from the lint emissions because it makes the code a bit easier to read. In some cases this separation would also allow to write some unit tests (as opposed to UI tests) for the separate function.

In our example, is_foo_fn looks like:

// use statements, impl EarlyLintPass, check_fn, ..

fn is_foo_fn(fn_kind: FnKind<'_>) -> bool {
    match fn_kind {
        FnKind::ItemFn(ident, ..) | FnKind::Method(ident, ..) => {
            ident.name == "foo"
        },
        FnKind::Closure(..) => false
    }
}

Now you'll want to also run the full test suite with cargo test. Apart from running all other UI tests, this ensures that our lint implementation is not violating any Clippy lints itself.

If you are still following the example, you'll see that the FooFunctionsPass violates a Clippy lint. So we are going to rename that struct to just Pass:

#[derive(Copy, Clone)]
pub struct Pass;

impl LintPass for Pass { /* .. */ }

That should be it for the lint implementation. Running cargo test should now pass and we can finish up our work by adding some documentation.

Documentation

The final thing before submitting our PR is to add some documentation to our lint declaration.

Please document your lint with a doc comment akin to the following:

/// **What it does:** Checks for ... (describe what the lint matches).
///
/// **Why is this bad?** Supply the reason for linting the code.
///
/// **Known problems:** None. (Or describe where it could go wrong.)
///
/// **Example:**
///
/// ```rust,ignore
/// // Bad
/// Insert a short example of code that triggers the lint
///
/// // Good
/// Insert a short example of improved code that doesn't trigger the lint
/// ```
declare_clippy_lint! { /* ... */ }

Once your lint is merged, this documentation will show up in the lint list.

Debugging

If you want to debug parts of your lint implementation, you can use the dbg! macro anywhere in your code. Running the tests should then include the debug output in the stdout part.

PR Checklist

TODO: Prose

• Followed lint naming conventions
• Added passing UI tests (including committed .stderr file)
• cargo test passes locally
• Added lint documentation

Cheatsheet

Here are some pointers to things you are likely going to need for every lint:

• The if_chain macro
• in_macro and in_external_macro
• Span
• Clippy diagnostics
• Applicability

For EarlyLintPass lints:

• EarlyLintPass
• syntax::ast

For LateLintPass lints:

• LateLintPass
• Ty::TyKind

While most of Clippy's lint utils are documented, most of rustc's internals lack documentation currently. This is unfortunate, but in most cases you can probably get away with copying things from existing similar lints. If you are stuck, don't hesitate to ask on Discord, IRC or in the issue/PR.