Ale: Disable linting for select files

[mark-westerhof]

I currently have some files that i don't want to lint within a project due to how massive they are. Is it possible to have linting disabled for filepaths that match a regex?

[w0rp]

There isn't a feature for that currently. For most tools, I recommend configuring whatever configuration files to exclude certain files if possible. Not many tools support that kind of behaviour.

I wonder if perhaps a feature should be added for excluding files above a set file size from being checked, maybe files with lines that are so long.

A filename regex option might make sense. You could include matches like '.*\.min\.js' and so on.

[mark-westerhof]

Unfortunately the tool doesn't support that behaviour in my example.

The filename regex solution is ideal. I used to rely on that behaviour in syntastic before switching over to ale, for example, in my ~/.vimrc:

let g:syntastic_ignore_files = ['.*\.json', '.*some/folder/.*\.js']

[w0rp]

If someone else wants to implement this, go for it. I recommend doing it in the function which queues a lint cycle. If no one else implements this, I will implement it eventually.

[adriaanzon]

You can achieve this with a simple autocommand:

autocmd BufEnter *.min.js ALEDisable

But that isn't ideal since:

1. You will have to enable ALE again with a BufLeave autocommand.
2. You may want to disable a specific linter, not all linters.

I think buffer-local variables could be a better solution.

[w0rp]

I'll implement an ignore list like above, _eventually_, if nobody else creates a pull request for it first.

[w0rp]

I have now accomplished this through slightly different means, which will solve this problem, and some configuration issues. You can now use let b:ale_enabled = 0 to disable ALE for a particular buffer. This will be respected by the cursor echoing function and the function for running linters. For configuring files based on patterns, I have created g:ale_pattern_options, for automatically setting buffer variables based on filename patterns. See :help g:ale_pattern_options

These options should make it possible to not only disable ALE for particular files, but also to set different linter options for different files, etc.

[w0rp]

@mark-westerhof You should now be able to disable linting for files like so.

let g:ale_pattern_options = {
\   '.*\.json$': {'ale_enabled': 0},
\   '.*some/folder/.*\.js$': {'ale_enabled': 0},
\}

[mark-westerhof]

Works great. Thanks alot!

[unphased]

@w0rp I really appreciate the presence of this feature. I often have many buffers open in a vim but one of them is a poorly written javascript file that i have to maintain without having prioritized the refactoring that it sorely needs. The 410 warnings and 75 errors cause ALE & Vim to slow to a crawl...

Once I set b:ale_enabled=0, ALE immediately stops updating signs, but the presence of the signs themselves still slow Vim down, not to mention that this is still also an assault upon the senses. I have to run sign unplace * and save the file to bring the signify and other signs back.

I'm just after having a single button i can press to toggle the activity of ALE and to clear signs if it's getting switched off.

What make that wonderfully simple would be if I can run sign unplace ALE* but this does not work!

Edit: I've also noticed an additional issue which is that once ALE's been disabled, the line column background highlight indicators are staying put. That's actually a bigger problem than having to flush all signs to clear them out. I don't know how to clear these out.

For the time being, I really have to manually specify for this file to disable ALE from the get-go.

[w0rp]

If you set ale_enabled to 0 with g:ale_pattern_options, linting will be disabled before any linting is done.

[w0rp]

See :help ALEDisable for disabling ALE and removing all of the errors and everything else.

[w0rp]

If someone wants to take the time to do it, they could write different commands which enable, disable, or toggle ALE just for one specific buffer.

[unphased]

@w0rp Yes! So I think we may have some components we can use to fix things. e.g. let b:ale_enabled=0 followed by ALEDisable and ALEEnable

[w0rp]

I'm now tracking that enhancement here: #817.

[olimorris]

Thanks for this. Ale was automatically folding my folds within my vimrc file, when editing, until I added let b:ale_enabled = 0.