Using coala-quickstart to Generate a coala Configuration File

This document aims to make people aware of coala-quickstart by providing abrief introduction about its features and how to quickly generatecoala configuration files for your projects.

What is coala-quickstart?

coala-quickstart is a CLI tool that helps users to quickly get started withcoala by generating a .coafile tailored for their project. The .coafileis generated based on the questions answered by the users about their project.

Features

coala-quickstart offers the following features:

  • Out-of-the-box support for projects using various popular languages such asC/C++, Python, JavaScript and many more with built-in check routines.
  • Automatic detection of languages used in your project.
  • Automatic identification of bears that might be relevant for your project anddetection of bear settings based on the languages used.
  • A clean and simple interface with a well defined flow.

Installation

To install the latest stable version run:

  1. $ pip3 install coala-quickstart

To install the latest development version run:

  1. $ git clone https://github.com/coala/coala-quickstart.git
  2. $ cd coala-quickstart
  3. $ pip3 install .

Usage

To get started simply run:

  1. $ coala-quickstart

This should prompt you for your project’s directory. If you want to use yourcurrent directory, just press the return key.

It will detect the languages used in your project and provide a percentagedistribution of those languages in your project. You will now be presentedwith a list of bears that might be relevant to your project to choose from.Once you choose your bears you are done.

At the end, you should have a file named .coafile generated at the root ofyour project directory. This contains all the settings needed by coala to lintand fix your code. You can also open the .coafile in your favorite editor andedit the settings to suit your needs.

Once you have completed these steps just execute coala from your project’sroot:

  1. $ coala