Integrations

Use Badness in CI, Git hooks, and other formatting tools. For editor setup, see Editor Setup.

GitHub Actions

Use badness-action to check LaTeX and BibTeX files in CI. It installs and caches a prebuilt Badness binary on GitHub-hosted Linux, macOS, and Windows runners. Create .github/workflows/badness.yml:

name: Badness

on:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches: [main]

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  badness:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: jolars/badness-action@v1
        with:
          version: v0.26.0

By default, the action runs badness format --check and badness lint from the repository root, checking .tex, .sty, .cls, .dtx, .ins, and .bib files without changing them. Formatting differences or lint findings fail the check. It uses the CLI’s configuration discovery; directory walks honor .gitignore and the exclusions in badness.toml.

The @v1 tag selects the action version, and version selects the Badness CLI release. Keep the CLI release aligned with your local installation and pre-commit revision. Omitting version selects the latest release with a binary for the runner.

For a formatting-only check under chapters/:

- uses: jolars/badness-action@v1
  with:
    version: v0.26.0
    path: chapters/
    lint: "false"

Set format: "false" to run only linting, or config: path/to/badness.toml to select a configuration file. quiet: "true" lists files needing formatting without printing a diff. See the action reference for all supported inputs and outputs.

pre-commit

badness-pre-commit runs Badness on staged files. The hooks install a prebuilt binary wheel from PyPI, so no separate Badness, Rust, or LaTeX installation is needed.

Install pre-commit, then add this entry to .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/jolars/badness-pre-commit
    rev: v0.26.0
    hooks:
      - id: badness-lint
      - id: badness-format

Install the Git hook and run it once over all tracked files:

pre-commit install
pre-commit run --all-files

On subsequent commits, both hooks select staged .tex, .sty, .cls, .dtx, .ins, and .bib files. badness-lint reports findings, and badness-format formats files in place. When a hook changes a file, review and stage the changes, then commit again.

To apply safe lint fixes, add --fix to the lint hook and keep it before formatting:

hooks:
  - id: badness-lint
    args: [--fix]
  - id: badness-format

To check formatting without changing files, add args: [--check] to badness-format. Add --quiet alongside it to list files needing formatting without printing a diff.

Both hooks pass --force-exclude, so exclude and extend-exclude in badness.toml apply even though pre-commit supplies filenames explicitly. See file exclusions.

The rev selects the Badness release: v0.26.0 installs Badness 0.26.0. Run pre-commit autoupdate to update hook revisions, then review and commit the changes to .pre-commit-config.yaml.

dprint

Format LaTeX and BibTeX alongside other languages with dprint and dprint-plugin-badness. The plugin bundles Badness’s formatter as WebAssembly, so no Badness CLI or LaTeX installation is needed.

Install dprint. If your project has no dprint.json, create one with dprint init, then add Badness:

dprint config add jolars/badness

Commit the versioned, checksummed plugin URL that the command adds to dprint.json. Run dprint fmt to format files in place or dprint check to check without changing files. The check fails when files need formatting. Both commands run all configured plugins; Badness handles .tex, .sty, .cls, .dtx, .ins, and .bib files.

Add settings under badness, keeping the plugins array created above:

{
  "badness": {
    "lineWidth": 80,
    "indentWidth": 2
  }
}

The plugin reads dprint.json and does not load badness.toml. Its keys use camelCase. See the plugin’s configuration reference for the supported settings. The independently released plugin uses different wrapping defaults from the CLI. When wrap is unset, ordinary .tex files and .bib files reflow, while .sty, .cls, .dtx, .ins, and *.code.tex files preserve authored line breaks. Set "wrap": "reflow" under badness in dprint.json to match the CLI’s default for every file kind.

Use dprint’s top-level includes and excludes for file selection; Badness’s TOML exclusions do not apply. dprint also respects .gitignore. See dprint’s configuration guide.

The plugin cannot read sibling .sty and .cls files to discover local command signatures. A document that depends on those signatures can therefore format differently from the CLI. The plugin provides formatting; use the CLI or pre-commit for linting.

The plugin is released independently of the CLI. Run dprint config update, then review and commit the configuration changes. For comparable output, use releases with the same badness-formatter version and equivalent settings, allowing for the difference in local package context.

Using with Panache

Panache can format and lint LaTeX code blocks inside Markdown and Quarto documents. Install both CLIs on your PATH, then add this to the document project’s panache.toml:

[formatters]
latex = "badness"
bib = "badness"

[linters]
latex = "badness"
tex = "badness"

The formatter covers blocks labeled latex, tex, bib, or bibtex. The linter preset covers blocks labeled latex or tex; it does not lint BibTeX blocks.

Run panache format document.qmd to format the document and its code blocks, or panache lint document.qmd to report findings without changing files. The linter also runs through Panache’s language server. To apply safe fixes before formatting, run panache lint --fix document.qmd, then format the document.

Panache’s Badness linter preset passes --no-config, so it does not load badness.toml and uses Badness’s default lint configuration. The formatter preset runs separately and retains its CLI configuration behavior. See Panache’s formatter preset, linter preset, and external-tool configuration.