Linting

[wetneb]

My IDE is probably not configured to the correct tab vs space setting (or tab width…), so I get ugly diffs.

It would be nice to:

• document the code style used in the project and how to configure one's IDE to respect it
• add a linter to the CI to prevent people from accidentally pushing incorrect whitespace…

[robertvazan]

This is a subset of #535.

[robertvazan]

Though, I would note, It's probably impossible to configure all IDEs consistently. Maintaining indentation by hand is a nightmare. If we aren't going to standardize on an IDE, then it would be best to tolerate small amount of diff noise and have someone run a formatter periodically to keep the code style consistent.

[wetneb]

I had a look at a few established Java projects and none of them seemed to check linting in their CI. Is it perhaps not a widespread practice in the Java world? Has anyone got examples of Java projects where this is used?

[thadguidry]

@wetneb It is widespread, but not sure how you are looking or searching for style checking tools as part of older Travis or newer GitHub workflows? Many projects just use Checkstyle (directly, or through Maven or Gradle plugins)

I think in a pinch, you could just wire up Codacy (which does Checkstyle) and then manage with some config or options to only do style checking and nothing else? Dunno, you'd have to check with them or the Checkstyle community.

[wetneb]

Update: in OpenRefine, we use mvn formatter:validate (to check linting in the CI) and mvn formatter:format to format the code. It works well.