See errors in buffers¶
When a syntax check in the current buffer has finished Flycheck reports the results of the check in the current buffer in two ways:
- Highlight errors, warnings, etc. directly in the buffer according to
flycheck-highlighting-mode
. - Indicate errors, warnings, etc. in the fringe according to
flycheck-indication-mode
.
Additionally Flycheck indicates its current state and the number of errors and warnings in the mode line.
The following screenshot illustrates how this looks like in the default Emacs color theme. It shows an info, a warning and an error annotation, from top to bottom. Please also note the fringe indicators on the left side and the emphasized mode line indicator in the bottom right corner:
Note
The colours of fringe icons and the whole appearance of the error highlights depend on the active color theme. Although red, orange and green or blue seem to be somewhat standard colours for Flycheck’s annotations across many popular themes, please take a closer look at your color theme if you’re in doubt about the meaning of a Flycheck highlight.
Error levels¶
All errors that syntax checkers report have a level which tells you the severity of the error. Flycheck has three built-in levels:
error
- Severe errors like syntax or type errors.
warning
- Potential but not fatal mistakes which you should likely fix nonetheless.
info
- Purely informational messages which inform about notable things in the current buffer, or provide additional help to fix errors or warnings.
Each error level has a distinct highlighting and colour which helps you to identify the severity of each error right in the buffer.
Error highlights¶
Flycheck highlights errors directly in the buffer according to
flycheck-highlighting-mode
. By default these highlights consist of a coloured
wave underline which spans the whole symbol at the error location as in the
screenshot above but the highlights are entirely customisable. You can change
the extents of highlighting or disable it completely with
flycheck-highlighting-mode
, or customise Flycheck’s faces to change the style
of the underline or use different colours.
-
defcustom
flycheck-highlighting-mode
¶ How Flycheck highlights errors and warnings in the buffer:
nil
- Do not highlight anything at all.
lines
- Highlight the whole line and discard any information about the column.
columns
- Highlight the column of the error if any, otherwise like
lines
. symbols
- Highlight the entire symbol around the error column if any, otherwise like
columns
. This is this default. sexps
- Highlight the entire expression around the error column if any, otherwise
like
columns
.
Warning
In some major modes
sexps
is very slow, because discovering expression boundaries efficiently is hard.The built-in
python-mode
is known to suffer from this issue.Be careful when enabling this mode.
The highlights use the following faces depending on the error level:
Fringe icons¶
In GUI frames Flycheck also adds indicators to the fringe—the left or right border of an Emacs window that is—to help you identify erroneous lines quickly. These indicators consist of a rightward-pointing double arrow shape coloured in the colour of the corresponding error level.
Note
Flycheck extensions can define custom error levels with different fringe indicators. Furthermore some Emacs distributions like Spacemacs redefine Flycheck’s error levels to use different indicators. If you’re using such a distribution please take a look at its documentation if you’re unsure about the appearance of Flycheck’s indicators.
Note that we discourage you from changing the shape of Flycheck’s fringe indicators.
You can customise the location of these indicators (left or right fringe) with
flycheck-indication-mode
which also lets you turn off these indicators
completely:
-
defcustom
flycheck-indication-mode
¶ How Flycheck indicates errors and warnings in the buffer fringes:
left-fringe
orright-fringe
- Use the left or right fringe respectively.
nil
- Do not indicate errors and warnings in the fringe.
The following faces control the colours of the fringe indicators. However they
do not let you change the shape of the indicators—to achieve this you’d have to
redefine the error levels with flycheck-define-error-level
.
Mode line¶
Like all minor modes Flycheck also has a mode line indicator. You can see it in the bottom right corner of the above screenshot. By default the indicator shows Flycheck’s current state via one of the following texts:
FlyC* |
Flycheck is checking the buffer currently. |
FlyC |
There are no errors or warnings in the current buffer. |
FlyC:3/5 |
There are three errors and five warnings in the current buffer. |
FlyC- |
Flycheck did not find a syntax checker for the current buffer.
Take a look at the list of supported languages and type C-c ! v to see what checkers
are available for the current buffer. |
FlyC! |
The last syntax check failed. Inspect the *Messages* buffer
look for error messages, and consider reporting a bug. |
FlyC? |
The last syntax check had a dubious result. The definition of a
syntax checker may have a bug. Inspect the *Messages*
buffer and consider reporting a bug. |
You can entirely customise the mode line indicator with flycheck-mode-line
:
-
defcustom
flycheck-mode-line
¶ A “mode line construct” for Flycheck’s mode line indicator.
See also
- Mode Line Data(elisp)
- Documentation of mode line constructs.
- flycheck-status-emoji
- A Flycheck extension which puts emojis into Flycheck’s mode line indicator.
- flycheck-color-mode-line
- A Flycheck extension which colours the entire mode line according to Flycheck’s status.
Error thresholds¶
To avoid flooding a buffers with excessive highlighting, cluttering the
appearance and slowing down Emacs, Flycheck takes precautions against syntax
checkers that report a large number of errors exceeding
flycheck-checker-error-threshold
:
-
defcustom
flycheck-checker-error-threshold
¶ The maximum number of errors a syntax checker is allowed to report.
If a syntax checker reports more errors the error information is discarded. To not run into the same issue again on the next syntax check the syntax checker is automatically added to
flycheck-disabled-checkers
in this case to disable it for the next syntax check.