Repolinter alternative

Repolinter, the TODO Group's tool for OSS-baseline checks (LICENSE present, README has the right sections, CONTRIBUTING / SECURITY / CODE_OF_CONDUCT in place, and so on), was archived in February 2026. Its last release predates the archive by over a year. alint is the language-agnostic, actively-maintained replacement. Its 42-entry migration matrix maps 30 of Repolinter's defaults fully, 8 partially, and 4 without a clean equivalent, and it adds cross-file, filename, and structured-config rules Repolinter never had.

What you get out of the box

The bundled oss-baseline@v1 ruleset (15 rules) covers Repolinter's core file-presence and content-shape checks: LICENSE, README sections, CONTRIBUTING, SECURITY, CODE_OF_CONDUCT, support contact, and issue / PR templates. Drop it into your .alint.yml:

extends:
  - alint://bundled/oss-baseline@v1

…and you're at parity with Repolinter's default config. Most users were running roughly that anyway. See the oss-baseline ruleset docs for the rule-by-rule breakdown.

What you gain by switching

Active maintenance. Latest release v0.14.2 (2026-07-24); release cadence is multiple per week. Repolinter's last release was 2024.
Cross-file rules. Repolinter checks one file at a time. alint's pair, for_each_dir, for_each_file, dir_contains, unique_by, and every_matching_has rules cover invariants Repolinter can't express.
Conditional rules. when: gates rules on facts evaluated once per run (has_rust, has_node, count_files, any_file_exists, custom command facts), so a single config can ship ecosystem-aware policy without false positives in repos that don't have the ecosystem. Repolinter has no comparable primitive.
Structured-query rules. Validate fields inside JSON / YAML / TOML with full RFC 9535 JSONPath. (Repolinter has partial jsonpath-plus support.)
21 more bundled rulesets. rust, node, python, go, java, dotnet, monorepo (cargo / pnpm / yarn workspaces), CI, hygiene (lockfiles, no-tracked-artifacts), tooling (editorconfig), docs (adr), compliance (apache-2, reuse), apache/governance, agent (hygiene, context). Repolinter ships only oss-baseline.
Auto-fix. 12 mechanically-safe fix ops (trim whitespace, normalise line endings, strip BOM/bidi, prepend / append, rename). Repolinter's auto-fix covers file presence only.
Performance. Sub-second on 100K-file workspaces; ~12 s on 1M files. Single static binary, no Node startup. See the benchmark history.
Agent-aware output. First-class agent output format with per-violation agent_instruction strings, designed for coding agents like Claude Code.

For the full feature delta against Repolinter (and ls-lint, Megalinter, EditorConfig, custom shell), see the compare page.

How to migrate

The step-by-step migration guide walks all 24 Repolinter axioms with side-by-side YAML. Most map directly; a handful need a small .alint.yml rewrite, and the guide flags every one. Real migrations from production OSS repos are written up in the case-study gallery.

Ready to switch? Install the binary, then follow the migration guide.

Migration guide → Install alint