nextflow-io / nextflow-io/nextflow
The linter could check whitespace use
Open
Nobody has claimed this yet.
stale
- Dominant language
- Groovy
- Stars
- 3.5k
- Forks
- 811
- Avg merge
- 2d 11h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 61
Description
New feature
I would like nextflow lint to check whitespace usage and warn about:
- use of tabulation (with the default settings), or use of spaces if the user added
-tabs - trailing whitespace
Use case
I found a nf-core module that happened to mix tabulations and spaces and was surprised nextflow lint didn't complain
$ git grep ' ' modules/nf-core/minimap2/align/main.nf
modules/nf-core/minimap2/align/main.nf: }
$ nextflow_lint modules/nf-core/minimap2/align/main.nf -o json
{
"date": "2026-02-12T15:33:07.368610659Z",
"summary": {
"errors": 0,
"filesWithErrors": 0,
"filesWithoutErrors": 1,
"filesFormatted": 0
},
"errors": [
],
"warnings": [
]
}
(you can't see it but my grep command had a proper tabulation in)
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by tracing the nextflow lint command and its existing warning and JSON-output handling. Implement checks for tabs under default settings, spaces when -tabs is enabled, and trailing whitespace; done means these cases produce warnings without changing the existing output format.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- groovy
- Domain
- cli, tooling
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100