CI and JSON output

A reproducible GitHub Actions job

This example pins the actions and the linter release. Replace the file list with the reviewed Zsh inputs in your repository.

name: Zsh checks

on:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches: [main]

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@3d3c42e5aac5ba805825da76410c181273ba90b1 # v7.0.1
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
      - uses: actions/setup-go@b7ad1dad31e06c5925ef5d2fc7ad053ef454303e # v7.0.0
        with:
          go-version: "1.25"
      - name: Install Zsh Lint
        run: go install github.com/z-shell/zsh-lint/cmd/zsh-lint@v1.1.0
      - name: Check native syntax
        run: zsh -f -n -- scripts/build.zsh example.plugin.zsh
      - name: Run semantic analysis
        run: zsh-lint scripts/build.zsh example.plugin.zsh

The native zsh -n check remains useful because official Zsh semantics are authoritative when a supplemental parser has a coverage gap.

JSON output

Pass --format=json before the paths:

zsh-lint --format=json scripts/build.zsh example.plugin.zsh > zsh-lint.json

The output is one versioned JSON object with sorted diagnostics and a summary:

{
  "version": 1,
  "diagnostics": [],
  "summary": {
    "files": 2,
    "diagnostics": 0,
    "errors": 0,
    "warnings": 0,
    "infos": 0,
    "hints": 0
  }
}

Parser failures appear as parse/error diagnostics. The exit code does not change in JSON mode: 0 means no Warning or Error, 1 means a Warning, Error, parser failure, or unreadable input, and 2 means a usage or output error.

Machine consumers should reject a JSON version they do not understand.