Badness

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Installation ​

Badness is distributed as a single binary, badness. The current version is 0.28.0. It is available from several sources:

  • crates.io: cargo install badness
  • Homebrew: brew install jolars/tap/badness
  • npm: npm install -g badness (bundles a prebuilt binary)
  • PyPI: uv tool install badness/pipx install badness
  • AUR (Arch Linux): yay -S badness-bin (prebuilt binary)
  • Nix: nix shell nixpkgs#badness; add pkgs.badness to environment.systemPackages for a persistent NixOS installation
  • mise/Aqua: see mise and Aqua below
  • Prebuilt binaries: from the releases page
  • VS Code/Open VSX: the Badness extension (also on Open VSX; works in Positron and Cursor)

The editor extension bundles a platform-specific badness binary and starts the language server automatically, so you do not need to install the CLI separately. See Editor Setup for configuration.

mise and Aqua ​

mise can install Badness through its Aqua backend:

sh
mise use aqua:jolars/badness

Commit the resulting mise.toml to share the selected version. With Aqua directly, run aqua init if the project has no aqua.yaml, then add and install Badness:

sh
aqua g -i jolars/badness
aqua install

Commit aqua.yaml to share the selected version. Both tools use the jolars/badness registry entry.

Install Script ​

The installer selects the release for your platform and installs it in a directory under your user account. On macOS or Linux:

sh
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://badness.dev/install | sh

On Windows, run this in PowerShell:

powershell
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "irm https://badness.dev/install.ps1 | iex"

From Source ​

Badness is written in Rust. With a Rust toolchain installed, build from a checkout:

sh
git clone https://github.com/jolars/badness
cd badness
cargo build --release

The build places the binary at target/release/badness. Copy it to a directory on your PATH, or run it in place.

To install it into Cargo’s bin directory instead:

sh
cargo install --path .

Verifying the Install ​

sh
badness --version

This should print badness 0.28.0.