Feature Linting

KTestify ships a built-in linter for .feature files. It catches problems that Cucumber would only surface mid-run, or not at all: tabs instead of spaces, undeclared topic aliases, and asset files that do not exist on disk.

Linting runs before any Cucumber or plugin startup, so it is fast enough for a pre-commit hook or a dedicated CI job.

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Running the linter

Docker image

docker run --rm \
  -v "$PWD/features:/workspace/features" \
  -v "$PWD/assets:/workspace/assets" \
  ghcr.io/ktestify/ktestify-cucumber:latest \
  lint /workspace/features \
       --assets-dir /workspace/assets

Fat JAR

java -jar ktestify-cucumber.jar lint features/

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	No ERROR-severity violations
1	At least one ERROR-severity violation (or warnings over --max-warnings)
2	Usage error, or no .feature files found

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Options

Option	Description
--format <fmt>	text (default), json, or codeclimate (GitLab Code Quality)
--no-semantic	Skip the domain rules (alias, file, and step definition checks)
--no-file-check	Skip on-disk asset file-existence checks (D003/D004)
--assets-subdir <name>	Assets folder beside each feature file (default: assets)
--assets-dir <path>	Absolute assets folder, overrides --assets-subdir
--disable <ids>	Comma-separated rule ids to disable, e.g. G013,G001
--ignore-tags <tags>	Comma-separated tags to skip, e.g. @WIP,@Skip (@ optional, alias --ignore-tagged). A tagged feature is skipped entirely; a tagged scenario (or rule) is excluded from the report
--max-warnings <n>	Fail (exit 1) if warnings exceed this count; -1 = never

GitLab Code Quality

The codeclimate format emits the GitLab Code Quality JSON array. Pipe it to a file and expose it as a report artifact:

lint-features:
  script:
    - docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/workspace" ghcr.io/ktestify/ktestify-cucumber:latest
      lint /workspace/features --format codeclimate > gl-code-quality-report.json
  artifacts:
    reports:
      codequality: gl-code-quality-report.json

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Rules

Structural rules (G*) check the Gherkin file itself. Domain rules (D*) check ktestify-specific semantics. Files that Cucumber cannot parse at all are reported through G007.

Structural rules

Rule	Severity	Description
G001	error	Tab character found; use spaces for indentation
G002	warn	Trailing whitespace
G003	warn	File does not end with a single newline
G004	error	Exactly one Feature declaration is required per file
G005	error	Feature has no name
G006	error	Scenario has no name
G007	warn	Line does not start with a recognised Gherkin keyword (includes parse errors)
G008	error	Step keyword has no text
G009	warn	Feature has no scenarios
G010	error	Malformed table row: every row must start and end with |
G011	error	Table row column count does not match the header
G012	warn	Unexpected indentation (two-space house style)
G013	warn	More than one consecutive blank line
G014	error	Table row is not attached to any step
G015	error	Content appears before the Feature declaration
G016	error	Step outside of a Background or Scenario
G017	warn	Empty header cell in data table

Domain rules

Rule	Severity	Description
D001	error	File value (a cell ending in a known extension) contains whitespace
D002	error	topicAlias / schemaAlias / namespaceAlias used in a Scenario is not declared in any Background table
D003	error	Referenced file / files value is missing from the assets folder
D004	warn	Assets directory not found; file-existence checks skipped
D005	error	Undefined step: no matching step definition in ktestify-cucumber or its plugins

Alias declaration is derived from the real step catalogue: the Background steps namespace(s), input topic, output topic, and schema(s) declare the aliases that Scenarios may reference.

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Example output

features/orders.feature
  12:1  error  D002  'out' used as topicAlias is not declared in any Background input/output topic table.
  18:1  error  D003  Referenced file 'expected.json' (column 'file') is missing from assets folder 'features/assets'.

2 error(s), 0 warning(s)