Linting and testing
Aider can automatically lint and test your code every time it makes changes. This helps identify and repair any problems introduced by the AI edits.
Linting
Aider comes with built in linters for most popular languages and will automatically lint code in these languages.
Or you can specify your favorite linter
with the --lint-cmd <cmd> switch.
The lint command should accept the filenames
of the files to lint.
If there are linting errors, aider expects the
command to print them on stdout/stderr
and return a non-zero exit code.
This is how most linters normally operate.
By default, aider will lint any files which it edits.
You can disable this with the --no-auto-lint switch.
Testing
You can run tests with /test <test-command>.
Aider will run the test command without any arguments.
If there are test errors, aider expects the
command to print them on stdout/stderr
and return a non-zero exit code.
Aider will try and fix any errors if the command returns a non-zero exit code.
You can configure aider to run your test suite
after each time the AI edits your code
using the --test-cmd <test-command> and
--auto-test switch.
Compiled languages
If you want to have aider compile code after each edit, you can use the lint and test commands to achieve this.
- You might want to recompile each file which was modified
to check for compile errors.
To do this,
provide a
--lint-cmdwhich both lints and compiles the file. You could create a small shell script for this. - You might want to rebuild the entire project after files
are edited to check for build errors.
To do this,
provide a
--test-cmdwhich both builds and tests the project. You could create a small shell script for this. Or you may be able to do something as simple as--test-cmd "dotnet build && dotnet test".
Manually running code
You can use the /run command in the chat to run your code
and optionally share the output with aider.
This can be useful to share error messages or to show aider
the code’s output before asking for changes or corrections.