Lint Passes - Clippy Documentation

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# Lint passes

Before working on the logic of a new lint, there is an important decision that every Clippy developer must make: to use `EarlyLintPass` or `LateLintPass`.

In short, the `LateLintPass` has access to type and symbol information while the `EarlyLintPass` doesn’t. If you don’t need access to type information, use the `EarlyLintPass`.

Let us expand on these two traits more below.

## `EarlyLintPass`

If you examine the documentation on `EarlyLintPass` closely, you’ll see that every method defined for this trait utilizes a `EarlyContext`. In `EarlyContext`’s documentation, it states:

> Context for lint checking of the AST, after expansion, before lowering to HIR.

Voilà. `EarlyLintPass` works only on the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) level. And AST is generated during the lexing and parsing phase of code compilation. Therefore, it doesn’t know what a symbol means or information about types, and it should be our trait choice for a new lint if the lint only deals with syntax-related issues.

While linting speed has not been a concern for Clippy, the `EarlyLintPass` is faster, and it should be your choice if you know for sure a lint does not need type information.

As a reminder, run the following command to generate boilerplate for lints that use `EarlyLintPass`:

    $ cargo dev new_lint --name=<your_new_lint> --pass=early --category=<your_category_choice>

### Example for `EarlyLintPass`

Take a look at the following code:

    #![allow(unused)]
    fn main() {
    let x = OurUndefinedType;
    x.non_existing_method();
    }

From the AST perspective, both lines are “grammatically” correct. The assignment uses a `let` and ends with a semicolon. The invocation of a method looks fine, too. As programmers, we might raise a few questions already, but the parser is okay with it. This is what we mean when we say `EarlyLintPass` deals with only syntax on the AST level.

Alternatively, think of the `foo_functions` lint we mentioned in the Define New Lints chapter.

We want the `foo_functions` lint to detect functions with `foo` as their name. Writing a lint that only checks for the name of a function means that we only work with the AST and don’t have to access the type system at all (the type system is where `LateLintPass` comes into the picture).

## `LateLintPass`

In contrast to `EarlyLintPass`, `LateLintPass` contains type information.

If you examine the documentation on `LateLintPass` closely, you see that every method defined in this trait utilizes a `LateContext`.

In `LateContext`’s documentation we will find methods that deal with type-checking, which do not exist in `EarlyContext`, such as:

- `maybe_typeck_results`
- `typeck_results`

### Example for `LateLintPass`

Let us take a look with the following example:

    #![allow(unused)]
    fn main() {
    let x = OurUndefinedType;
    x.non_existing_method();
    }

These two lines of code are syntactically correct code from the perspective of the AST. We have an assignment and invoke a method on the variable that is of a type. Grammatically, everything is in order for the parser.

However, going down a level and looking at the type information, the compiler will notice that both `OurUndefinedType` and `non_existing_method()` are undefined.

As Clippy developers, to access such type information, we must implement `LateLintPass` on our lint. When you browse through Clippy’s lints, you will notice that almost every lint is implemented in a `LateLintPass`, specifically because we often need to check not only for syntactic issues but also type information.

Another limitation of the `EarlyLintPass` is that the nodes are only identified by their position in the AST. This means that you can’t just get an `id` and request a certain node. For most lints that is fine, but we have some lints that require the inspection of other nodes, which is easier at the HIR level. In these cases, `LateLintPass` is the better choice.

As a reminder, run the following command to generate boilerplate for lints that use `LateLintPass`:

    $ cargo dev new_lint --name=<your_new_lint> --pass=late --category=<your_category_choice>