Checkstyle has errors but step passes

Mike Lehan

Running this

npm run --silent lint:tsc | npx @bartekbp/typescript-checkstyle > checkstyle.xml

On an example project produces a checkstyle file showing a TypeScript error. However because the program emits a 0 status code the step does not fail.

It would be a sensible assumption that if the report contains errors, it should fail the step even if the exit code is 0 (this would also permit multiple runs of different style checkers in a single step, emiting a report for each but not stopping if one encounters errors)

Is it possible to have the Pipe fail the step if the step is not yet failed and the report contains errors?

Patrik S

Hello @Mike Lehan ,

I think in this case you could make use of grep and an "if" condition in your pipeline in order to check the report file for any string that indicates an error. If this error string is found, you can force the step to fail by manually returning an exit code different than zero.

Please allow me to share the example below :

image: atlassian/default-image:3

pipelines:
 default:
   - step:
     script:
       - echo "Success" > test_file.txt # creates a test_file containing "Success" string
       - if grep "error" "test_file.txt"; then exit 1; fi  # Check if the file contains the string "error". If yes, exit with 1, making the step to fail. 
       - echo "This is an error" > test_file.txt # creates a test_file containing "error" string
       - if grep "error" "test_file.txt"; then exit 1; fi # Check if the file contains the string "error". If yes, exit with 1, making the step to fail. 

In this example, the first "if" command will return zero exit code (success), because the test_file.txt does not contain the "error" string (it just had "Success" string). However, in the second "if" the test_file.txt now has the string "This is an error", which will match the grep "error" and thus execute the exit 1  command that will make that step fail.

You can adapt the code above to analyze the checkstyle file generated by the command you are executing, and look for a string your application outputs that indicates that an error has happened.

Hope that helps! Let me know in case you have any questions.

Thank you, @Mike Lehan .

Kind regards,

Patrik S