Kate linter plugin

Just a quicky: I wrote a little plugin for KTextEditor which supplies you with basic error checking when you save documents. Currently only PHP (via php -l) and JavaScript (via JavaScript Lint) are supported.

Screenshots

Requirements

usual tools for compiling C++, e.g. gcc.
cmake
Qt development packages, i.e. under Ubuntu: sudo aptitude install libqt4-dev
KDE 4.2 with development packages for kdelibs and kdebase, i.e. under Ubuntu: sudo aptitude install kdebase-dev kdebase-workspace-dev kdelibs5-dev. Note: You’ll need the experimental KDE 4.2 packages activated as of now, see for example the Kubuntu news on KDE 4.2 RC1 for hints.
proper setup of environment variables, read this techbase article for more information. the .bashrc linked there should be enough for most people
For PHP support: a PHP executable which supports the -l switch for linting
For JavaScript support: a JavaScript Lint executable, you could download and compile the sources for example.

Installing

Get the sources for the linter plugin from KDE SVN and compile it, using e.g. the functions supplied via the .bashrc mentioned above:

     # go to your development folder
    cs
    # checkout sources
    svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/playground/devtools/kte_linter
    cd kte_linter
    # build base linter plugin
    cd linter
    cmakekde
    # build php linter plugin
    cd ../phplinter
    cmakekde
    # build javascript linter plugin
    cd ../jslinter
    cmakekde
    # update sycoca
    kbuildsycoca4
    # start editor and select the plugins - happy coding!
    kwrite

Todo

Support for more languages

If you know good linters drop me a note. But it would be even better if you could write your own linter plugin. It’s pretty easy, take a look at one of the existing plugins for a skeleton & documentation.

Right now each plugin returns a hardcoded list of highlighting-modes which it supports for linting. This should be made configurable so that custom highlighting modes are supported
make error messages more pretty

Happy coding!

Comments

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Comment by David Anderson (not verified) (2012-10-22 13:26:00)

Hi,

Just what I was looking for, if I could get it to work…

1) If I start up a session with PHP documents open, then it shows an error “exitCode 0, exitStatus 1” for every PHP document (whether it has errors or not)

2) It correctly detects whether a file has an error or not, but the window it opens to show the error is always empty. (i.e. If the file is good, then nothing happens upon saving - but if the file is bad then it throws up a window which has nothing inside it).

This is with KDE 4.8.5 on Fedora 16.

Comment by Medifast (not verified) (2009-09-28 15:19:00)

That is very cool!

Published on September 28, 2009.

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