glint/ROADMAP.md

Roadmap

This document tracks planned improvements to glint. Items are grouped by theme, roughly in priority order within each group. Nothing here is a commitment — the tool is experimental and the list will shift as real usage surfaces better priorities.

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Context simulation

Pass --branch, --tag, --source, or --var to glint check or glint graph to evaluate rules:if: expressions and only/except filters against a specific pipeline event.

• Single-context simulation — ✓ shipped v0.2.0; --branch, --tag, --source, --var flags on both subcommands; jobs classified as active / manual / skipped
• workflow:rules:variables: propagation — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; variables from the matching workflow rule entry injected into the evaluation context before job rules:if: expressions are evaluated
• Expression evaluator: multi-line if: values — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; newlines in block-scalar and folded YAML if: values treated as whitespace
• Expression evaluator: ${VAR} syntax — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; ${CI_COMMIT_BRANCH} equivalent to $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH everywhere
• Expression evaluator: regex flags — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; /pattern/i, /pattern/m, /pattern/s supported
• Expression evaluator: variable as regex RHS — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; $BRANCH =~ $PATTERN where $PATTERN holds a /regex/ string evaluates correctly
• Expression evaluator: bare true/false and integer literals — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; $FLAG == true, $COUNT == 4 compare as decimal strings matching GitLab CI behaviour
• Implicit default context — ✓ shipped v0.2.11; defaults to --branch main --source push when no context flag is given, so rules:if: is always evaluated
• --list-vars debug flag — ✓ shipped v0.2.11; prints sorted KEY=VALUE of all collected pipeline variables (root file + includes + workflow-rule union + effective context) to stderr
• Variable expansion — ✓ shipped v0.2.13; $VAR/${VAR} references within variable values expanded after all sources are merged; transitive chains resolved; visible in --list-vars
• Non-string scalar variables — ✓ shipped v0.2.13; BUILD: true, RETRIES: 3 rendered and injected correctly instead of being silently dropped
• YAML \/ escape in double-quoted strings — ✓ shipped v0.2.13; regex patterns like /^us\// in double-quoted if: blocks no longer cause a parse error
• Workflow rule strict evaluation — ✓ shipped v0.2.14; unparseable if: skips the rule instead of matching everything; prevents wrong variables being injected
• Single = operator — ✓ shipped v0.2.14; bare = accepted as alias for == in rules:if: expressions
• rules:changes: evaluation — ✓ shipped v0.2.21; --changes PATH and --changes-from REF flags; doublestar glob matching (* within segment, ** across segments); permissive when no file list provided
• Multi-context simulation — run multiple contexts in one invocation and print a comparison table (--context branch=main --context branch=develop --context tag=v1.0.0)
• Context-scoped linting — skip needs:/dependencies: cross-checks for jobs that are statically unreachable in the given context

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Lint coverage

The current rule set covers the most common sources of broken pipelines. These are the gaps most likely to matter in practice.

• Variable reference validation (GL032) — ✓ shipped v0.2.11; warns when a rules:if: expression references $VAR / ${VAR} not declared anywhere in pipeline YAML; predefined GitLab namespaces (CI_*, GITLAB_*, …) exempt; variables from included files are also considered
• rules:if: static reachability (GL033) — ✓ shipped v0.2.15; warns when every rule in a job's rules: block has when: never, making the job permanently excluded from any pipeline run; no if: evaluation required
• services: validation (GL034) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; map form requires name; alias must be a valid DNS label
• rules:changes / rules:exists absolute path detection (GL035) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; warns when a path starts with /; GitLab CI paths are always relative to the repo root
• timeout format validation (GL036) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; validates job-level and default.timeout against recognised GitLab CI duration strings
• id_tokens: / secrets: required-key checks (GL037, GL038) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; id_tokens entries must have aud; secrets entries must declare a provider
• pages:publish + artifacts.paths consistency (GL039) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; warns when the publish directory is missing from artifacts.paths
• Duplicate stage names (GL040) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; warns when a stage appears more than once in stages:
• cache:key:files must be exact paths (GL041) — ✓ shipped v0.2.16; warns when entries look like glob patterns
• Unreachable jobs — covered by GL033 (shipped v0.2.15); every-when:never rules block is statically dead
• inherit: completeness (GL043) — ✓ shipped v0.2.20; warns when inherit: default: is declared but there's no default: block, or list form names fields not set in default:

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Include resolution

• include: local: full resolution — ✓ shipped in v0.2.0; local files are read from disk, recursively resolved, and merged before linting
• include: remote: (URL) — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; plain HTTPS URLs are fetched (unauthenticated), parsed, and merged; sub-includes are resolved recursively; unreachable URLs emit [WARNING] and linting continues
• Recursive include depth limit — ✓ shipped v0.2.17; depth capped at 100 (matching GitLab); project/component includes now tracked in visited set to prevent cross-file cycles
• Offline mode / cache — ✓ shipped v0.2.17; --cache-dir DIR persists fetched templates; --offline serves from cache only; default cache dir (~/.cache/glint) used automatically with --offline
• include: inputs: — ✓ shipped v0.2.17; $[[ inputs.KEY ]] and $[[ inputs.KEY | default(…) ]] placeholders in fetched component YAML are substituted from the include's with: block before parsing

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Output formats — ✓ shipped v0.2.18

• JSON (--format json) — ✓ shipped v0.2.18; machine-readable findings with stable schema (version 1)
• SARIF (--format sarif) — ✓ shipped v0.2.18; SARIF 2.1.0; consumed natively by GitHub Code Scanning and GitLab SAST
• JUnit XML (--format junit) — ✓ shipped v0.2.18; lets CI pipelines publish lint results as a test report artifact
• GitHub annotation format (--format github) — ✓ shipped v0.2.18; emits ::error file=…,line=…,title=RULE::message lines so findings appear as inline comments in PR diffs

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Pipeline graph improvements

The SVG renderer and terminal tree cover the basic layout. These would bring it closer to GitLab's full interactive view.

• Terminal job tree — ✓ shipped in v0.2.0 as glint graph tree; stages as branches, jobs as leaves, context-aware annotations
• glint graph includes shows jobs per file — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; each include node shows the jobs it defines as dashed-arrow rounded nodes in a distinct style
• Multi-job connector accuracy — draw one connector per job pair rather than one per stage pair in classic mode, so pipelines with uneven columns look correct
• Job tooltip / detail panel — embed a hidden <title> and <desc> per chip so SVG viewers show stage, when, image, and needs on hover
• when: on_failure visual distinction — dashed border or distinct icon for failure-path jobs
• Blocked / skipped state colouring — grey out jobs that are statically unreachable given known rules: conditions
• Interactive HTML output — self-contained .html file with pan/zoom and a job-detail sidebar; no external dependencies
• Mermaid pipeline output — keep pipeline.go but wire it up through --graph pipeline --format mermaid for users who want to paste into mermaid.live

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Findings quality — ✓ file and line numbers shipped post-v0.2.0; ruff-style format shipped v0.2.11

File and line numbers on findings — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; every finding includes the source file and exact line of the job key. Works across local includes, remote project templates, and fetched component templates.

Ruff-style output format — ✓ shipped v0.2.11; findings follow file:line: RULEID [severity] message matching the convention used by ruff and other modern linters.

Remaining improvements

• needs: optional: true false-positive errors — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; optional missing needs are downgraded to [WARNING]
• extends: jobs with missing script false errors — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; jobs using extends: that have no script after resolution emit [WARNING] (the script may come from an unfetchable remote base)
• rules:if: static reachability (GL042) — ✓ shipped v0.2.20; warns when all rules:if: conditions evaluate to false given declared variable values (only fires when all referenced vars are declared in YAML)

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CI / editor integration

• GitLab CI template — a .gitlab-ci.yml snippet that runs glint as a pipeline-validation job before the real pipeline executes; publishable to the GitLab CI/CD Catalog
• GitHub Actions action — uses: k3nny/glint@v1 wrapper for repositories that mirror or manage GitLab pipelines from GitHub
• Pre-commit hook — entry for pre-commit so glint runs automatically on git commit when .gitlab-ci.yml changes
• LSP server — glint lsp mode exposing diagnostics over the Language Server Protocol; enables inline squiggles in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, etc. without a dedicated extension
• VS Code extension — thin wrapper around the LSP server with syntax highlighting for .gitlab-ci.yml

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Configuration — ✓ shipped v0.2.19

• .glint.yml config file — ✓ shipped v0.2.19; ignore:, severity:, stages:, token:, url:, cache_dir:; searched from the pipeline directory up to the git root
• Inline suppression comments — ✓ shipped v0.2.19; # glint: ignore GL007 before a job definition; comma/space-separated rules; # glint: ignore all wildcard

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Reliability and developer experience

• Structured rule IDs — ✓ shipped post-v0.2.0; GL001–GL031 assigned; GL032 added v0.2.11; GL033 added v0.2.15; GL034–GL041 added v0.2.16; output formats (--format json/sarif/junit/github) added v0.2.18; GL042–GL043 added v0.2.20
• glint explain <rule-id> — ✓ shipped v0.2.20; prints rule description, rationale, bad-YAML example, and fix; glint explain (no arg) lists all rules
• Semantic versioning and first release — shipped as v0.1.0 (2026-06-07)
• Subcommand CLI — shipped as v0.2.0 (2026-06-11); glint check / glint graph [mode] with ruff-style --help
• Changelog automation — generate release notes from Conventional Commits via git-cliff or similar
• Fuzz testing — add a go test -fuzz target for the YAML parser to harden it against malformed input