Configuration

splint has default behavior which can be altered by modifying a .splint.edn file at the root of the project. Rules can be enabled or disabled or have specific options set.

The format of the file is an edn map. Keys must be symbols and any rules configuration must be fully-qualified:

{
 lint/eq-nil {:enabled false} ; [1]
 performance {:enabled false} ; [2]
 metrics/parameter-count {:chosen-style :include-rest} ; [3]
 output "full" ; [4]
 global {:excludes ["foo" "glob:**/bar.clj" "regex:[a-z].clj"]} ; [5]
 }

To enable or disable a specific rule, modify the config file to include the rule name with a map of {:enabled true/false} ([1] above). To enable or disable an entire genre of rules, use only the genre ([2]). Some rules have specific options or styles that can be set ([3]). These are detailed in the full rule pages.

The following command-line options can be set as well: output, parallel, quiet, require, silent, and summary. output requires a string, require requires a vector of strings, and the rest booleans ([4]).

The config option global is available as well ([5]). It is currently only used for file exclusions (see below).

Excluding files

splint checks every file recursively from the derived or provided file paths. This isn't always desirable, so specific paths or path globs can be excluded. To exclude a file entirely from consideration by splint, use global. Otherwise, excluding from a single rule will only disable the rule for matching files.

{global {:excludes ["foo" "glob:**/bar.clj" "regex:[a-z].clj"]}
 lint/eq-nil {:excludes ["glob:**/src/exclude_me.clj"]}}

:excludes takes a vector of strings that it uses to exclude matching files. The strings can optionally specify a syntax to use in the form prefix:pattern. The supported syntaxes are:

Prefix	Syntax	Match full path?	Notes
glob	FileSystem.getPathMatcher	Yes	Uses PathMatcher's matches.
regex	java.util.regex.Pattern	Yes	Uses PathMatcher's matches.
re-find	java.util.regex.Pattern	No	So-named to match the behavior of clojure.core/re-find.
string	N/A	No	A fixed string checked against the full file path with clojure.string/includes?.

If the prefix is not provided, the string is treated as the re-find syntax.

Example matching logic explanation

{global {:excludes ["foo" "glob:**/bar.clj" "regex:[a-z].clj"]}
 lint/eq-nil {:excludes ["glob:**/src/exclude_me.clj"]}}

• glob:foo.clj matches foo.clj but does not match aa/foo.clj. glob:**/foo.clj matches foo.clj and aa/foo.clj.
• regex:foo.clj matches foo.clj but does not match aa/foo.clj. regex:.*/foo.clj matches foo.clj and aa/foo.clj.
• re-find:foo.clj matches foo.clj and aa/foo.clj and aa/foo-clj.
• string:foo.clj matches foo.clj and aa/foo.clj but does not match foo-clj or aa/foo-clj.

Disabling Rules Inline

A single rule can be disabled in the following form with #_:splint/disable:

#_:splint/disable (+ 1 x)

Entire genres of rules and specific rules can be disabled in the same manner by using the map form:

#_{:splint/disable [style lint/plus-one]} (do (+ 1 x))

This will disable all style rules and the specific lint/plus-one rule in the following form. The inline rule doesn't apply to any further forms, so there's no need for a #_:splint/enable like in other linters.

Merging options

When identifying whether to apply a given rule to a form, the provided sources of configuration are merged: Command line options override .splint.edn, and inline options override command line options.

Auto-Generated Configuration

If you wish to use Splint but have a large number of offenses, it can be helpful to "start from zero" and disable all of the rules that raise diagnostics. Instead of hand-crafting such a config file, use --auto-gen-config, which will run Splint over the chosen directories/files and then create a .splint.edn file that disables each failing rule. Each rule has a comment with the number of diagnostics and the :description and the available styles of the rule, which should provide enough information to make reasonable decisions about how to fix each one.