Instead of using a service like this one (or Hound) that comments directly on pull requests, we chose to integrate the same tools in our build process with Phare (https://github.com/mirego/phare), a command-line tool we built which runs Rubocop, JSHint, JSCS, etc. and exits with a global status.
If the code has coding style violations, the build breaks. Exactly like it would if we pushed a failing test.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the noise generated by comments about coding style on pull requests.
There's an obvious trade-off here, though. For example, why stop at basic lint-style checks? You could make a static analyzer part of the build process and fail the build when a defect is detected. The trade-off is the same as with growing a test suite that always runs: Over time, your build times increase, and that makes development tedious.
There's a balance to be found between core checks that run at build time, and additional, more extensive checks, which run automatically and asynchronously (!) once a developer believes their changes to be good enough. Both things have their place in a proper software development flow.
If you also add "and any coding style things you care about, you have to make the linter check for", then you don't have to waste any time on that stuff in the pull request.
GitLab B.V. CEO here. Totally agree that lint errors should fail the build instead of commenting. Otherwise all the people /cc't in the pull/merge request get all the hound comments in their email. And the nice thing about Rubocop https://github.com/bbatsov/rubocop is that you can disable tests easily. With GitLab we initially had: 406 files inspected, 1609 offenses detected. But after selecting only the most important checks and a day of fixing we got a green build.
Same for me. I used Hound for a while but it was annoying to see all this comments. So I just added Rubocop check inside `rake test` so build is broken if you have code style issues
Actually, it does in a certain way. Travis runs builds (tests + Phare) for all pull requests (eg. https://travis-ci.org/mirego/encore/pull_requests) so we know if pull requests made by external contributors "break the build".
I think he's commenting on the approach of how the system reports, not its usefulness. Have you considered bundling up the results as a second commit status[1] rather than making comments?
This looks pretty awesome and will just get better as more languages get supported. But, it comments on commits, not on the diff in the PR. I think commeting on the diff looks nicer (you see code snippet with the comment) and in my opinion it's also easyer to find all the comments that way. Instead of clicking the commit hash on the commen each time.
It seems comparable, though we are supporting different languages. Plans are to support a lot more languages, and support private repos also. (Actually they are already supported, but linthubot needs to have read only access to the repository). All feedback is welcome.
Currently no plans for charging. If we'll change these plans, existing repositories will stay free. Send an email to support@linthub.io for the error, and we'll check it immediatly.
Yeah, true. We've tightened the scope, read/write is not necessary any longer. Only for private repo's, the linthubot user needs to be added to the repo with read access.
If the code has coding style violations, the build breaks. Exactly like it would if we pushed a failing test.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the noise generated by comments about coding style on pull requests.