Run a pre-flight check on Markdown files before committing blog postings

Run this script from inside your git repository with your blog Markdown files.

The script will attempt to find the file check-markdown-files.conf in the root of your repository, which includes your configuration.

In order to use this script as git commit hook, you have to execute it from .git/hooks/pre-commit, or make this script a symlink (Linux/Unix only).

The following example assumes that you are currently in the root directory of your blog repository, and this repository is checked out next to your blog repository.

cd .git/hooks/ && ln -s ../check-markdown-files/check-markdown-files.py pre-commit && cd -

In check-markdown-files.conf, the following checks and config options are available. All checks are disabled by default, and can be enabled in the configuration file.

If a check is enabled, it applies to all Markdown files (global configuration). Most checks can be disabled on a local level, using flags in the supresswarnings header in Frontmatter.

All available checks are listes in the CHECKS document.

Add the following parts:

• Default in read_config in check-markdown-files.py
• Add the call for the check in handle_markdown_file in check-markdown-files.py
• Write the actual function for the check:
  • The function receives the following parameters
    • a copy of the config
    • the full content of the file, as currently in progress
    • the filename of the currently processed file
    • the Frontmatter header, from initial reading the file (not updated during the execution of the different tests)
  • The function returns the content of the file, potentially modified
• Add documentation in CHECKS.md
• Add one or more tests for the check in tests/
  • Add the test(s) in tests.yml

All tests are found in the tests/ directory, or a subdirectory. Tests are defined in the tests.yml file, and run by the run-tests.py script.

Add the new test in tests.yml, as example:

new_test:
    rc_expected: 0
    cmdoptions: ""
    test_subdirectory: ""
    stdout_expected: False
    stderr_expected: False
    stdout_must_include: []
    stderr_must_include: []
    stdout_must_not_include: []
    stderr_must_not_include: []

The following options are available:

• rc_expected: This is the expected return code of check-markdown-files.py when running this test
• cmdoptions: Which additional options to use when running the test
• test_subdirectory: In which subdirectory under tests is the test
• stdout_expected: Does this test expect output on stdout - if this is set to false, and output is produced, this is an error
• stderr_expected: Does this test expect output on stderr - if this is set to false, and output is produced, this is an error
• stdout_lines_expected: how many lines are expected on stdout - if the number of lines differ, this is an error
• stderr_lines_expected: how many lines are expected on stderr - if the number of lines differ, this is an error
• stdout_must_include: list of strings which must appear in the stdout output
• stderr_must_include: list of strings which must appear in the stderr output
• stdout_must_not_include: list of strings which must not appear in the stdout output
• stderr_must_not_include: list of strings which must not appear in the stderr output

The following files are used:

• tests/new_test.conf: This is the configfile for the test, enable all tests which should run
• tests/new_test.input: If this file exist, it will overwrite tests/new_test.md before the test is run, also tests/new_test.md will be deleted afterwards
• tests/new_test.md: The Markdown file for this test
• tests/new_test.expected: If this file exists, the content is matched against tests/new_test.md after the test - if the files differ, this is an error