Continuous Integration

Glotfile is built to run in CI so a broken or stale translation state can’t reach main. The key command is glotfile check; glotfile lint gives you finer control.

The one-liner

Add a single step that validates the catalog and confirms exports are up to date:

glotfile check

check exits non-zero if there are any errors — a lint error or an output-stale finding (someone changed copy but forgot to run glotfile export). That one command is usually all you need.

Tip: Why check over export + git diff — check re-exports in memory and compares to disk, so you don’t need to write files and diff. It also catches catalog problems (placeholder mismatches, empty translations, glossary violations) that a diff wouldn’t.

What gets gated

Failure	Caught by	Default severity
Empty source / empty translation	`lint`, `check`	error
Placeholder or ICU mismatch	`lint`, `check`	error
Glossary violation	`lint`, `check`	error
Length / identical-to-source / whitespace / spelling	`lint`, `check`	warn
Exported file missing or stale	`check` only	error

Tune severities in config.lint — see Checks and Validation.

GitHub Actions

name: i18n
on: [pull_request]
jobs:
  glotfile:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 22
      - run: npx glotfile check

Note: No credentials needed in CI — check and lint are fully offline — only translate needs an API key. Don’t put translation secrets in CI just to validate.

Failing on warnings

By default only errors fail the build. To hold the line on warnings too:

glotfile lint --max-warnings 0

lint exits 1 when warnings exceed the threshold. Combine with check (run both) if you want stale-export gating and zero warnings.

Code scanning (SARIF)

Emit SARIF and upload it so findings appear inline on the PR, each located at its line in glotfile.json:

      - run: npx glotfile lint --format sarif > glotfile.sarif
        continue-on-error: true
      - uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        with:
          sarif_file: glotfile.sarif

--format json is also available for custom tooling.

Scoping a run

glotfile lint --rule placeholder-mismatch,icu-mismatch   # only the critical rules
glotfile lint --locale fr,de                             # only some locales

lint and check · Checks and Validation · export · Translation Workflow