ksylint

Check kaitai .ksy files for errors and style flaws.

Installation

pip install ksylint

Usage

ksylint hello_world.ksy

Missing style guide tests (TODO)

1. General formatting
   • Use block YAML style in most general cases, unless explicitly specified/allowed otherwise.
   • Formatting of maps-inside-sequences MUST have - delimiter and first map element on the same first line.
2. Meta section (meta)
   • xref — keys inside MUST be in alphabetic order
   • license — MUST be a valid SPDX license expression
   • ks-version — SHOULD list lowest possible KS compiler version that is able to compile this file.
   • KS syntax allows usage of some top-level elements deep inside the hierarchy — this can be useful during development, for example, for purpose of grafting one .ksy file into another quickly. However, in production-quality .ksy files, one MUST NOT use keys like title, imports or ks-version (i.e. everything except explicitly listed in a list above) on intermediate levels.
   • The following keys are reserved for internal use (i.e. debugging and test running) and MUST NOT be used in general-purpose .ksy files: ks-debug, ks-opaque-types
3. Documentation
   • Single-line documentation strings SHOULD BE formatted using raw unquoted string literals.
   • Multi-line SHOULD BE formatted using YAML literal style scalar, i.e. using : | syntax.
   • Lines should be wrapped to be 80 columns long. If it doesn’t fit into single line after wrapping, then it’s a multi-line docstring, so use proper multi-line syntax.
   • There is no formal conversion of docstrings into language-specific docstrings now in KS, but generally we SHOULD keep it close to CommonMark formatting, i.e.:
     • paragraphs separated by an empty line
     • bullet lists created by an asterisk * and a space at the beginning of the line
     • use backticks ` to wrap identifiers and small pieces of code
4. Sequence attributes
   • Attribute identifiers
   • Trailing padding

Not checked

• All identifiers, docstrings, comments and generally all human-readable text SHOULD be kept in English, unless there’s a very good reason not to do so.
• application — SHOULD name a particular application, if there’s any; if there are too many to list (for example, network packet formats or executables are used virtually everywhere), then one SHOULD omit this field.
• file-extension — if there’s only one extension, MUST be a string; if there are several, MUST be an sequence in block form and SHOULD order extensions from most popular extension to least popular.