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Using coding standards#

Coding standards help you ensure that Codacy analyzes multiple repositories with the same tool and code pattern configurations. For example, you can use a coding standard to ensure that a group of repositories follow the same security rules or coding conventions.

Create coding standards on your organization to define different tool and code pattern configurations that apply to a set of programming languages. After creating a coding standard, apply it to your repositories:

  • Each repository can only follow one coding standard at a time. Applying a new coding standard to a repository unassigns any previously applied coding standard.
  • Applying a coding standard to a repository only affects the configurations of the tools that are included in the coding standard, while the remaining tool and code pattern configurations of the repository remain unchanged.
  • If you later edit the tool and code pattern configurations in a coding standard, the repositories following that coding standard automatically start using the updated configurations on the next analysis.
  • When you customize the tools or code patterns of a repository that follows a coding standard, Codacy warns you that the repository will stop following the coding standard and asks for your confirmation.

Optionally, set a default coding standard to apply it automatically to all new repositories that you add to Codacy. If no coding standard is set as default, new repositories don't follow any coding standard and use the Codacy default configurations instead.

Important

Coding standards turn tools with configuration files on and off. Those tool configuration files, however, take precedence over the code patterns defined on the coding standard.

Creating a coding standard#

To create a coding standard for your organization:

  1. Open your organization Coding standards page, tab Coding standards.

  2. Click the button Create new standard at the top right-hand corner of the page. This opens a window with the coding standard creation form.

    Note

    Codacy currently supports up to 10 coding standards per organization.

  3. Enter a unique name and click Create standard.

    Optionally, select a repository for Codacy to use as a baseline when bootstrapping the tool and pattern configurations for the new coding standard. This is useful if you already have a configured repository that you wish to use as a template.

    Creating a new coding standard

  4. Select the programming languages that the new coding standard should cover and click Next: Tools and patterns.

    The coding standard will only include configurations for the tools that support at least one of the selected languages.

    Selecting the languages for the coding standard

  5. Configure the tools and patterns of the coding standard and click Next: Select and apply to repositories.

    • Toggle the tools to run when Codacy analyzes your code
    • For each enabled tool, configure the code patterns to use

    Tip

    • Use the filters to find the relevant tools and code patterns. The recommended configurations are manually curated by Codacy or based on tool defaults and are marked with the icon Recommended icon.
    • To toggle multiple code patterns at once, click the checkbox of the first pattern and Shift+click the checkbox of the last pattern in a range.
    • To toggle all the code patterns visible on the list, click the checkbox on the header of the code patterns list. If there are more code patterns to load on the list, you can click the link Enable/Disable all <N> patterns to toggle all patterns matching the current filters.

    Configuring the tools and patterns for the coding standard

  6. Select existing repositories that should follow the new coding standard and click Save and apply standard.

    Codacy will start using the new coding standard on the next analysis of each selected repository.

    Applying the coding standard to repositories

Setting a coding standard as default#

To set a coding standard as default:

  1. Open your organization Coding standards page, tab Coding standards.

  2. Toggle Make default on the relevant coding standard card.

    Note

    Only one coding standard at a time can be the default coding standard.

    Setting a coding standard as the default

Editing a coding standard#

To edit an existing coding standard or change the repositories that follow that coding standard:

  1. Open your organization Coding standards page, tab Coding standards.

  2. Click the edit icon on the coding standard card.

    Editing an existing coding standard

  3. Edit the current coding standard configurations and click the button Next to advance between the following pages:

    • The programming languages that the coding standard applies to
    • The tool and code pattern configurations of the coding standard
    • The repositories that follow the coding standard

    You can also rename the coding standard using the input at the bottom of the first page of the wizard:

    Renaming a coding standard

  4. Click the button Save and apply standard on the repository selection page to save your changes to the coding standard.

    Codacy will start using the updated coding standard on the next analysis of each selected repository.

    Note

    If you stop applying a coding standard to a repository, Codacy restores the previous code pattern configurations of that repository, but keeps the tool activation status defined by the coding standard.

Deleting a coding standard#

To delete a coding standard:

  1. Open your organization Coding standards page, tab Coding standards.

  2. Click the trash can icon on the coding standard card and confirm.

    Note

    If you delete a coding standard, Codacy restores the previous code pattern configurations of any repositories following the coding standard, but keeps the tool activation status defined by the coding standard.

    Deleting a coding standard

See also#

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Last modified May 26, 2023