Upcoming proselint release requires new "check" verb

[benknoble]

See for reference:

• Segmentation Fault amperser/proselint#1378 (comment)
• amperser/proselint@01b507e
• refactor(cli): switch click -> argparse and add logging amperser/proselint#1400

cc @Nytelife26

I'm not sure what the release timeline is or what the best way is for Ale to support proselint: we could try to support multiple versions and insert the check verb as appropriate, or we could declare that only the next release (whatever it is) is supported.

It looks like there are lots of proselint linters (I count 14) that duplicate the call to ale#linter#Define, so a first step might be to refactor a common ale#proselint#GetCommand or similar.

[Nytelife26]

I can attest that all future versions of proselint (0.15 onwards) will use proselint check as the subcommand for running the linter, and everything from the initial release to 0.14 will use the prior behaviour of allowing bare proselint.

From this, if ALE plans to support previous versions, it should be trivial to detect the installed version and work from there. If ALE will exclusively support 0.15 onwards, it's as simple as updating it to proselint check.

We currently release on an as-appropriate basis, so I aim to have 0.15 released by the end of October 2025, when Python 3.9 is officially end-of-life.

Many thanks for opening this issue.

[benknoble]

Honestly, given the nature of fixes in 0.15+, I'd recommend dropping support for 0.14 here. But will wait for maintainer input.

[rymdbar]

I'm not the maintainer, but I do know that backwards compability is highly valued in this project. If it is trivial to detect the version and act differently for ≤0.14 vs. ≥0.15, then doing so would be ALE:s preference.

[benknoble]

If Proselint released a 1.0 with more commitment to a stable interface, would that change anyone's opinion?

[Nytelife26]

It is worth noting that I don't anticipate a 1.0 release on a short timescale. There is much to do before we're ready for that.

[Nytelife26]

0.16.0 has now landed, with these changes and substantial differences in the JSON output schema. Since this is now a stable schema, you can determine which behaviour to use with proselint version. If an error is encountered, you know automatically that you're on a previous version with the old output.

[mavit]

you can determine which behaviour to use with proselint version. If an error is encountered, you know automatically that you're on a previous version with the old output.

Not always true, I'm afraid. Older versions will "succeed" if there happens to be a file in the current directory called version.

[Nytelife26]

My mistake. It's probably preferable to run proselint --version, and if that fails, you're on 0.16+ (assuming you have verified proselint is available in the first place). Perhaps there should be a version key in the JSON output to make this easier for future changes.