======== rstcheck

.. image:: https://travis-ci.org/myint/rstcheck.svg?branch=master :target: https://travis-ci.org/myint/rstcheck :alt: Build status

Checks syntax of reStructuredText and code blocks nested within it.

.. contents::

Installation

From pip::

$ pip install rstcheck

Supported languages in code blocks

• Bash
• Doctest
• C (C99)
• C++ (C++11)
• JSON
• XML
• Python
• reStructuredText

Examples

With bad Python syntax:

.. code:: rst

====
Test
====

.. code:: python

    print(

::

$ rstcheck bad_python.rst
bad_python.rst:7: (ERROR/3) (python) unexpected EOF while parsing

With bad C++ syntax:

.. code:: rst

====
Test
====

.. code:: cpp

    int main()
    {
        return x;
    }

::

$ rstcheck bad_cpp.rst
bad_cpp.rst:9: (ERROR/3) (cpp) error: 'x' was not declared in this scope

With bad syntax in the reStructuredText document itself:

.. code:: rst

====
Test
===

::

$ rstcheck bad_rst.rst
bad_rst.rst:1: (SEVERE/4) Title overline & underline mismatch.

Options

::

usage: rstcheck [-h] [--config CONFIG] [-r] [--report level]
                [--ignore-language language] [--ignore-messages messages]
                [--ignore-directives directives]
                [--ignore-substitutions substitutions] [--ignore-roles roles]
                [--debug] [--version]
                files [files ...]

Checks code blocks in reStructuredText. Sphinx is enabled.

positional arguments:
  files                 files to check

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --config CONFIG       location of config file
  -r, --recursive       run recursively over directories
  --report level        report system messages at or higher than level; info,
                        warning, error, severe, none (default: info)
  --ignore-language language, --ignore language
                        comma-separated list of languages to ignore
  --ignore-messages messages
                        python regex that match the messages to ignore
  --ignore-directives directives
                        comma-separated list of directives to ignore
  --ignore-substitutions substitutions
                        comma-separated list of substitutions to ignore
  --ignore-roles roles  comma-separated list of roles to ignore
  --debug               show messages helpful for debugging
  --version             show program's version number and exit

Ignore specific languages

You can ignore checking of nested code blocks by language. Either use the command-line option --ignore or put a comment in the document:

.. code-block:: rst

.. rstcheck: ignore-language=cpp,python,rst

Ignore specific errors

Since docutils doesn't categorize their error messages beyond the high-level categories of: info, warning, error, and severe; we need filter them out at a textual level. This is done by passing a Python regex. As example you can pass a regex like this to ignore several errors::

(Title underline too short.*|Duplicate implicit target.*')

Configuration file

You can use the same arguments from the command line as options in the local configuration file of the project (just replace - for _). rstcheck looks for a file .rstcheck.cfg or setup.cfg in the directory or ancestor directories of the file it is checking.

For example, consider a project with the following directory structure::

foo
├── docs
│   └── bar.rst
├── index.rst
└── .rstcheck.cfg

.rstcheck.cfg contains:

.. code-block:: cfg

[rstcheck]
ignore_directives=one,two,three
ignore_roles=src,RFC
ignore_messages=(Document or section may not begin with a transition\.$)
report=warning

bar.rst contains:

.. code-block:: rst

Bar
===

:src:`hello_world.py`
:RFC:`793`

.. one::

   Hello

rstcheck will make use of the .rstcheck.cfg::

$ rstcheck foo/docs/bar.rst

For a Python project, you should put the configuration settings for rstcheck inside the general setup.cfg distutils configuration file_, in the project root.

You can override the location of the config file with the --config argument::

$ rstcheck --config $HOME/.rstcheck.ini foo/docs/bar.rst

will use the file .rstcheck.ini in your home directory. If the argument to --config is a directory, rstcheck will search that directory and any any of its ancestors for a file .rstcheck.cfg or setup.cfg::

$ rstcheck --config foo /tmp/bar.rst

would use the project configuration in ./foo/.rstcheck.cfg to check the unrelated file /tmp/bar.rst. Calling rstcheck with the --debug option will show the location of the config file that is being used, if any.

.. _distutils configuration file: https://docs.python.org/3/distutils/configfile.html

Sphinx

To enable Sphinx::

$ pip install sphinx

The installed Sphinx version must be at least 1.5.

To check that Sphinx support is enabled::

$ rstcheck -h | grep 'Sphinx is enabled'

Usage in Vim

Using with Syntastic_:

.. code:: vim

let g:syntastic_rst_checkers = ['rstcheck']

Using with ALE_:

Just install rstcheck and make sure is on your path.

.. _Syntastic: https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic .. _ALE: https://github.com/w0rp/ale

Use as a module

rstcheck.check() yields a series of tuples. The first value of each tuple is the line number (not the line index). The second value is the error message.

import rstcheck list(rstcheck.check('Example\n===')) [(2, '(INFO/1) Possible title underline, too short for the title.')]

Note that this does not load any configuration as that would mutate the docutils registries.

Use as a pre-commit hook

Add this to your .pre-commit-config.yaml

.. code-block:: yaml

-   repo: https://github.com/myint/rstcheck
    rev: ''  # Use the sha / tag you want to point at
    hooks:
    -   id: rstcheck

Testing

To run all the tests, do::

$ make test

Unit tests are in test_rstcheck.py.

System tests are composed of example good/bad input. The test inputs are contained in the examples directory. For basic tests, adding a test should just be a matter of adding files to examples/good or examples/bad.

History

(next version)

• Add --config option to change the location of the config file.

3.3.1 (2018-10-09)

• Make compatible with Sphinx >= 1.8.

3.3 (2018-03-17)

• Parse more options from configuration file (thanks to Santos Gallegos).
• Allow ignoring specific (info/warning/error) messages via --ignore-messages (thanks to Santos Gallegos).

3.2 (2018-02-17)

• Check for invalid Markdown-style links (thanks to biscuitsnake).
• Allow configuration to be stored in setup.cfg (thanks to Maël Pedretti).
• Add --recursive option to recursively drill down directories to check for all *.rst files.

3.1 (2017-03-08)

• Add support for checking XML code blocks (thanks to Sameer Singh).

3.0.1 (2017-03-01)

• Support UTF-8 byte order marks (BOM). Previously, docutils would interpret the BOM as a visible character, which would lead to false positives about underlines being too short.

3.0 (2016-12-19)

• Optionally support Sphinx 1.5. Sphinx support will be enabled if Sphinx is installed.

2.0 (2015-07-27)

• Support loading settings from configuration files.

1.0 (2015-03-14)

• Add Sphinx support.

0.1 (2013-12-02)

• Initial version.

.. rstcheck: ignore-language=cpp,python,rst