Sorry, i just absolutely in no way can wrap my head around the purpose of this page. When i initially found it, i thought that it lists standalone linter programs and their packages. But it seems to actually contain a list of editor plugins for linting? We already have LSP page and now i'm confused and struggle to understand the difference, since every LSP (most of the time) also performs linting.

Perhaps would be useful have a dedicated page with linters for each language + link to Arch package. I would definitely add a few entries to that list. Pigeon (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

They are standalone programs. They also may or may not have an editor plugin or LSP extension, either in the same package or another package using the standalone program. — Lahwaacz (talk) 10:55, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

• They are standalone programs.

As i thee this, haskell-hls-hlint-plugin should be replaced/complemented by hlint; tinymist (typst) should be removed from this list since it doesn't provide a standalone linter, only (within) LSP (which is already on LSP page).

• They also may or may not have an editor plugin or LSP extension, either in the same package or another package using the standalone program.

Then i would add cppcheck to C/C++ row. Also Odin has built-in linter with odin check packaged with odin.

There is also no mention of typos and codespell across the whole ArchWiki. Would they fit in "markdown linter" category? or something like "General Purpose". These 2 awesome programs check source code for plain-english misspelings.

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Do i understand this page right :)? Pigeon (talk) 18:40, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

"linters servers can be installed natively using the following packages."

I've never head the word "linter server". Are we referring to Language Server here? Pigeon (talk) 18:58, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Hey, I've edited the page to only list packages that provide standalone linter programs. I think that whether or not those packages also ship a Language Server is irrelevant for this page (to avoid confusion).

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Instead of listing Language Servers here, we could add something like the following:

Tip If you want live linting suggestions inside your text editor, see Language Server Protocol page.

near the top of the page.

But if this page (Lint) won't list any language servers and won't name things like "linters for text editors", this {{Tip}} is even unnecessary. Pigeon (talk) 05:33, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the changes, I would maybe separate "Natural language" from "General purpose". And I like the tip 👍 — Lahwaacz (talk) 12:44, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

• I would maybe separate "Natural language" from "General purpose".

See these 2 beautiful lines of C code:

// comment: exausted mispelling

char *exausted_mispelling = "exausted";

typos catches all five misspellings here, even though 3/5 are in the program's source code. codespell doesn't detect misspellings in the variable name here (though it sometimes does), but also spots one in the string (which is part or program source code) and in comments.

So what i mean here is that these also lint code, though somewhat indirectly. Overall, i don't mind them being in the "Natural Language" section. If you still think it's worth it, feel free to incorporate the corrections. Pigeon (talk) 05:16, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough, let's keep it as it is. — Lahwaacz (talk) 11:10, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I thought about it a bit and actually think that you're right: with our current list, such separation is beneficial. I've addressed that in the recent edits to LSP and Lint pages (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Language_Server_Protocol&diff=prev&oldid=868669 and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Lint&diff=prev&oldid=868668).

I think that this discussion can be closed. Pigeon (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

(This is also relevant for LSP page).

I see a lot of empty "package" entries here and also many AUR packages which among the other things are sometimes unmaintained. There are many good package managers that specifically focus on developer tools and there is a big chance that one might find the needed Linter/LangServer there, if it's not present in the official repos / AUR.

I don't know if it's OK to do such recommendations on Arch Wiki (i'm pretty new here), but if it's ok i would go ahead and add something similar to what i have written in Formatter page. What do ya think? Pigeon (talk) 22:17, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

It's fine, but I would skip the last part with Nix and mise. IMO if people already use these, they will get the message from the preceding part, but otherwise it is not a good place to start looking for a linter package. — Lahwaacz (talk) 12:40, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

This situation sounds like a good case for creating a place to list all package managers beyond pacman available for Arch Linux. Then we could link to that, where appropriate. At this point, we have Linuxbrew, Flatpak, Snap, Guix, Nix, Mise, pkgx, PkgForge's soar. I cannot speak for all of them, but Nix, for instance, certainly has packages of a great quality.

Though all PMs of those i mentioned specialize on a slightly different goals. Maybe it deserves a sub-categorized section in e.g. List of applications?

I've recently created a section List_of_applications/Utilities#Language runtime version management, but covers a different niche. For example, Flatpak, Brew and others will certainly not fit such purpose. I don't know how these 2 purposes could be combined together.

Also there is a division (with both package management for General-purpose applications and Language runtimes) for language-specific and language-agnostic tools. I am pretty sure that listing language-specific tools like NPM package manager and NVM version manager is beyond the scope of such list.

So the question is:

• is it a reasonable idea in the first place?
• where to put that? Somewhere in the List of applications?
• how to avoid duplication with sections like List_of_applications/Utilities#Language_runtime_version_management that serve similar purpose but cannot replace one another?
• should we also create subsections to list language-specific package mangers like uv, npm, ...

Pigeon (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it is a proposal or clarification questions:)

• Why do we have Lint and Formatter instead of "List of linters" (or "List of linting tools"? (edit: there is List of applications/Utilities#Linters, so "List of linters" sounds good for me) and "List of formatters" ("…formatting tools"?) (edit: we have List of applications/Utilities#Code formatters so "List of code formatters" is my current choice) ?
• Why these two pages formatted as tables instead of just lists like List of programming languages?
• Do we really need three separate pages—List of programming languages, Lint, Formatter? What about combining all information from them into List of programming languages?

I also don't like constructions like "Link_A, Link_B, Link_C, Link_D" — "Package_A, Package_B, Package_C, Package_D" (see e.g. JavaScript in Lint and Clojure in Formatter. I would prefer list of "Link_X — Package_X" instead.

— Andrei Korshikov (talk) 01:20, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Forgot to mention LSP—"List of language servers" and DAP—"List of debuggers". — Andrei Korshikov (talk) 01:28, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I think it's fine if we just add these pages to Category:Lists_of_software. It's not like we should rename every list page to List of ... — Lahwaacz (talk) 09:21, 26 April 2026 (UTC)