Quickstart
==========

Installing yamllint
-------------------

First, install yamllint. The easiest way is to use pip, the Python package
manager:

::

 sudo pip install yamllint

If you prefer installing from source, you can run, from the source directory:

::

 python setup.py sdist
 sudo pip install dist/yamllint-*.tar.gz

Running yamllint
----------------

Basic usage:

::

 yamllint file.yml other-file.yaml

You can also lint all YAML files in a whole directory:

::

 yamllint .

The output will look like (colors are not displayed here [#colored-output]_):

::

 file.yml
   6:2       warning  missing starting space in comment  (comments)
   57:1      error    trailing spaces  (trailing-spaces)
   60:3      error    wrong indentation: expected 4 but found 2  (indentation)

 other-file.yml
   1:1       warning  missing document start "---"  (document-start)
   9:81      error    line too long (84 > 80 characters)  (line-length)
   31:1      error    too many blank lines (4 > 2)  (empty-lines)
   37:12     error    too many spaces inside braces  (braces)

Add the ``-f parsable`` arguments if you need an output format parsable by a
machine (for instance for :doc:`syntax highlighting in text editors
<text_editors>`). The output will then look like:

::

 file.yml:6:2: [warning] missing starting space in comment (comments)
 file.yml:57:1: [error] trailing spaces (trailing-spaces)
 file.yml:60:3: [error] wrong indentation: expected 4 but found 2 (indentation)

If you have a custom linting configuration file (see :doc:`how to configure
yamllint <configuration>`), it can be passed to yamllint using the ``-c``
option:

::

 yamllint -c ~/myconfig file.yml

.. note::

   If you have a ``.yamllint`` file in your working directory, it will be
   automatically loaded as configuration by yamllint.

.. rubric:: Footnotes

.. [#colored-output] The default output format is colored and inspired by
   `eslint <http://eslint.org/>`_, a great linting tool for Javascript.