Code Hygiene

Code hygiene is the practice of writing code that is readable and maintainable. In this chapter, we'll learn how Lux can help us maintain code hygiene in our Lua projects.

Linting with luacheck

Linting is the process of analyzing code for potential errors and stylistic issues (lines too long, unused variables, etc.). Lux comes with luacheck, a linter for Lua code, built-in. To run luacheck on your project, use the following command:

lx check

Formatting with stylua

stylua is a Lua code formatter that can automatically format your Lua code to a consistent style. Lux vendors stylua and provides a command to format your Lua files:

lx fmt

Doing so will format according to your .stylua.toml file, defined in the project root. Otherwise, it will use the default style.

Git Hooks

We recommend setting up a Git hook to run lx check and lx fmt before each commit to ensure that you never forget to lint and format your code.

To set up a Git hook, create a file called .git/hooks/pre-commit in your project directory with the following content:

#!/bin/sh

lx check
lx fmt

Make sure to make the file executable:

chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-commit

Now, every time you commit changes to your project, lx check and lx fmt will run automatically!