@kjanat/actionlint

Static checker for GitHub Actions workflow files, distributed as a prebuilt binary.

This is the npm distribution of kjanat/actionlint, a fork of rhysd/actionlint. Installing it puts an actionlint executable on your PATH; no Go toolchain is needed.

Install

npm install --save-dev @kjanat/actionlint

Or run it without adding it to the project:

npx @kjanat/actionlint

Usage

After installing it as a development dependency, run it in the project and it finds the workflows itself:

npx actionlint

As a package script:

{
  "scripts": {
    "lint:workflows": "actionlint"
  }
}

actionlint exits 0 when it finds nothing, 1 when it reports problems, and 2 or 3 on a usage error or a fatal error. Those statuses are forwarded verbatim, so it drops into CI unchanged.

See the usage documentation for the full command line, and the checks list for what it looks for.

The manual page ships in the package as man/actionlint.1. npm registered man pages with the system man program up to v11; from v12 it no longer does, so on a current npm read it directly:

man ./node_modules/@kjanat/actionlint/man/actionlint.1

Configuration schema

The package includes actionlint.schema.json for completion and validation in configuration editors. For a config at .github/actionlint.yaml, use the installed copy with:

# yaml-language-server: $schema=../node_modules/@kjanat/actionlint/actionlint.schema.json

These URLs require an npm release containing the schema:

jsDelivr:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@kjanat/actionlint/actionlint.schema.json

esm.sh:

https://esm.sh/@kjanat/actionlint/actionlint.schema.json

UNPKG:

https://unpkg.com/@kjanat/actionlint/actionlint.schema.json

For example, use jsDelivr in an editor's schema directive:

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@kjanat/actionlint/actionlint.schema.json

Unversioned URLs follow the latest npm release. Insert @<version> after @kjanat/actionlint to select the schema for a specific release that includes it.

ShellCheck and Pyflakes

actionlint also checks the shell scripts inside run: steps with ShellCheck, and Python scripts with Pyflakes, when those are on your PATH. Neither is bundled here; install them separately to enable those checks.

How this package is put together

This package contains no binary itself. It declares one optionalDependencies entry per platform, each published under the @kjanat-actionlint scope so the binaries stay out of the @kjanat namespace:

| Package | Runs on | | -------------------------------------------- | --------------------- | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-darwin-arm64 | macOS Apple silicon | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-darwin-x64 | macOS Intel | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-freebsd-ia32 | FreeBSD 32-bit x86 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-freebsd-x64 | FreeBSD x86-64 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-linux-arm64 | Linux ARM64 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-linux-arm | Linux ARMv6 and ARMv7 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-linux-ia32 | Linux 32-bit x86 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-linux-x64 | Linux x86-64 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-win32-arm64 | Windows ARM64 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-win32-ia32 | Windows 32-bit x86 | | @kjanat-actionlint/actionlint-win32-x64 | Windows x86-64 |

Each declares os and cpu, so your package manager downloads only the one matching your machine and skips the rest. The actionlint command here is a small launcher that resolves that package and execs the binary inside it.

There is no separate musl build: the binaries are statically linked, so the linux-* packages run on Alpine and on glibc distributions alike.

The binaries are the same ones attached to the GitHub release; each archive is verified against the release's published checksums before being repackaged.

If the binary is not found

The launcher fails with an explanation, but the usual cause is a package manager that skipped optional dependencies. Reinstall without --no-optional or --omit=optional.

Using Bun with minimumReleaseAge? Add @kjanat-actionlint/* to minimumReleaseAgeExcludes alongside @kjanat/actionlint. A fresh release otherwise installs the facade while its binaries are still age-gated.

Other ways to install

Homebrew, Arch (AUR), Scoop, Docker, a download script, and go install are all covered in the installation documentation.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.txt.