# checking shell scripts on travis
Whenever I write shell scripts (usually in Bash) I find it a good practice to
run shellcheck to make sure that I haven’t done any obvious mistakes, such as
forgetting to quote variables (which happens every now and then).
When I was tinkering with ddns-route53
I thought that it would be nice if Travis could run shellcheck for me.
I had some trouble with getting shellcheck installed, but eventually found a
solution after hopping through a bunch of GitHub issues (don’t even know where I
ended up).
The following .travis.yml should get you up and running in no time:
language: bash
sudo: required
dist: trusty
before_install:
- echo "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-backports universe" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
- sudo apt-get update -qq
- sudo apt-get install shellcheck -y
script:
- shellcheck $FILENAME
$FILENAME could also be replaced with a glob or something like $(find . -maxdepth 1
-type f -executable) if you have several files that needs to be checked.
Speaking of shell scripts, I sometimes find myself returning to Thoughtbot’s
The Unix Shell’s Humble If
blog post when I forget the how’s and why’s of constructing an if statement in
Bash.