docs/html/tools/help/lint.jd

page.title=lint
parent.title=Tools
parent.link=index.html
@jd:body

<div id="qv-wrapper">
  <div id="qv">
     <h2>In this document</h2>
  <ol>
     <li><a href="#syntax">Syntax</a></li>
     <li><a href="#options">Options</a></li>
     <li><a href="#config_keywords">Configuring Java and XML Source Files</a></li>
  </ol>
  </div>
</div>

<p>The Android {@code lint} tool is a static code analysis tool that checks your Android project source files for potential bugs and optimization improvements for correctness, security, performance, usability, accessibility, and internationalization. </p>
<p>For more information on running {@code lint}, see <a href="{@docRoot}tools/debugging/improving-w-lint.html">Improving Your Code with lint</a>.</p>

<h2 id="syntax">Syntax</h2>
<p>
<pre>lint [flags] &lt;project directory&gt;</pre>

For example, you can issue the following command to scan the Java and XML files under the {@code myproject}  directory and its subdirectories. The result is displayed on the console.
<pre>lint myproject</pre>

You can also use {@code lint} to check for a specific issue. For example, you can run the following command to scan the files under the {@code myproject} directory and its subdirectories to check for XML attributes missing the Android namespace prefix. The issue ID {@code MissingPrefix} tells lint to only scan for this issue.
<pre>lint --check MissingPrefix myproject</pre>

You can create an HTML report for the issues that {@code lint} detects. For example, you can run the following command to scan the {@code myproject} directory and its subdirectories for accessibility issues, then generate an HTML report in the {@code accessibility_report.html} file.
<pre>lint --check Accessibility --HTML accessibility_report.html myproject</pre>
</p>

<h2 id="options">Options</h2>
<p>Table 1 describes the command-line options for {@code lint}.</p>
<p class="table-caption" id="table1">
  <strong>Table 1.</strong> Command-line options for lint</p>
<table>
<tr>
  <th>Category</th>
  <th>Option</th>
  <th>Description</th>
  <th>Comments</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td rowspan="7">Checking</td>
<td><nobr><code>--disable &lt;list&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Disable checking for a specific list of issues.</td>
<td>The <code>&lt;list&gt;</code> must be a comma-separated list of {@code lint} issue IDs or categories.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--enable &lt;list&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Check for all the default issues supported by {@code lint} as well as the specifically enabled list of issues.</td>
<td>The <code>&lt;list&gt;</code> must be a comma-separated list of {@code lint} issue IDs or categories.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--check &lt;list&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Check for a specific list of issues.</td>
<td>The <code>&lt;list&gt;</code> must be a comma-separated list of {@code lint} issue IDs or categories.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>-w</code> or <code>--nowarn</code></nobr></td>
<td>Only check for errors and ignore warnings</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>-Wall</code></nobr></td>
<td>Check for all warnings, including those that are disabled by default</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>-Werror</code></nobr></td>
<td>Report all warnings as errors</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--config &lt;filename&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Use the specified configuration file to determine if issues are enabled or disabled for {@code lint} checking</td>
<td>If the project contains a {@code lint.xml} file, the {@code lint.xml} file will be used as the configuration file by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td rowspan="9">Reporting</td>
<td><nobr><code>--html &lt;filename&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Generate an HTML report.</td>
<td>The report is saved in the output file specified in the argument. The HTML output includes code snippets of the source code where {@code lint} detected an issue, a verbose description of the issue found, and links to the source file.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--url &lt;filepath&gt;=&lt;url&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>In the HTML output, replace a local path prefix <code>&lt;filepath&gt;</code> with a url prefix <code>&lt;url&gt;</code>.</td>
<td>The {@code --url} option only applies when you are generating an HTML report with the {@code --html} option. You can specify multiple &lt;filepath&gt;=&lt;url&gt; mappings in the argument by separating each mapping with a comma.<p>To turn off linking to files, use {@code --url none}</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--simplehtml &lt;filename&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Generate a simple HTML report</td>
<td>The report is saved in the output file specified in the argument.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--xml &lt;filename&gt;</code></nobr></td>
<td>Generate an XML report</td>
<td>The report is saved in the output file specified in the argument.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--fullpath</code></nobr></td>
<td>Show the full file paths in the {@code lint} checking results.</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--showall</code></nobr></td>
<td>Don't truncate long messages or lists of alternate locations.</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--nolines</code></nobr></td>
<td>Don't include code snippets from the source files in the output.</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--exitcode</code></nobr></td>
<td>Set the exit code to 1 if errors are found.</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--quiet</code></nobr></td>
<td>Don't show the progress indicator.</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td rowspan="4">Help</td>
<td><nobr><code>--help</code></nobr></td>
<td>List the command-line arguments supported by the {@code lint} tool.</td>
<td>Use {@code --help &lt;topic&gt;} to see help information for a specific topic, such as "suppress".</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--list</code></nobr></td>
<td>List the ID and short description for issues that can be checked by {@code lint}</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--show</code></nobr></td>
<td>List the ID and verbose description for issues that can be checked by {@code lint}</td>
<td>Use {@code --show &lt;ids&gt;} to see descriptions for a specific list of {@code lint} issue IDs.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><nobr><code>--version</code></nobr></td>
<td>Show the {@code lint} version</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>

</table>


<h2 id="config_keywords">Configuring Java and XML Source Files</h2>
<p>To configure lint checking, you can apply the following annotation or attribute to the source files in your Android project. </p>
<ul>
<LI>To disable lint checking for a specific Java class or method, use the <code>@SuppressLint</code> annotation. </LI>
<li>To disable lint checking for specific sections of your XML file, use the <code>tools:ignore</code> attribute. </li>
</ul>
<p>You can also specify your lint checking preferences for a specific Android project in the lint.xml file.  For more information on configuring lint, see <a href="{@docRoot}tools/debugging/improving-w-lint.html">Improving Your Code with lint</a>.</p>