Bug: Edgecase: Error when shellcheck is not installed

Metadata

Project: rockcraft
Number: #886
Type: issue
State: open
Author: RafaelJohn9
Labels: —
Created: 2025-05-19 04:40 AM UTC
Updated: 2025-05-19 04:40 AM UTC
Closed: —

Current evaluation

make lint fails with 'xargs: shellcheck: No such file or directory' when shellcheck is missing; lint-shellcheck lacks an install-shellcheck prerequisite. Still reproducible in current common.mk; unlabelled with no maintainer activity for ~15 months.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: No labels, no comments, no assignee, and no maintainer interaction in 469 days, so it has never been triaged. The bug is still present in the code: common.mk:181 defines lint-shellcheck with no dependency on install-shellcheck (unlike lint-prettier which depends on install-npm), so running make lint without make setup still produces the exact xargs error reported. A trivial fix (adding install-shellcheck as a prerequisite) would resolve it, but a maintainer needs to confirm the intended approach first.

Impact: 15 Quick Win: 13.5 Staleness: 80 Complexity: 10 Confidence: 75 Support Request: 10

Issue body

### Bug Description When running `make lint`. I got this error ``` git ls-files | file --mime-type -Nnf- | grep shellscript | cut -f1 -d: | xargs -r shellcheck xargs: shellcheck: No such file or directory make: *** [common.mk:157: lint-shellcheck] Error 127 ``` Root cause: seems to happen if `shellcheck` hasn't been installed in the system ### To Reproduce - Ensure you don't have shellcheck installed in the system - Run `make lint` ### Environment Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ### rockcraft.yaml ```yaml None ``` ### Relevant log output ```shell None ```

Evaluation history

Date	Model	Scores	Action	Summary
2026-09-01 01:18 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.8-27b	Impact: 15 Quick Win: 13.5 Staleness: 80 Complexity: 10 Confidence: 75 Support Request: 10	needs triage	make lint fails with 'xargs: shellcheck: No such file or directory' when shellcheck is missing; lint-shellcheck lacks an install-shellcheck prerequisite. Still reproducible in current common.mk; unlabelled with no maintainer activity for ~15 months.
2026-07-22 12:09 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 95 Complexity: 10 Confidence: 80 Support Request: 10	close stale	Report of make lint failing with xargs shellcheck not found when the tool is missing. Issue has been inactive for over a year with no maintainer response or progress.
2026-07-08 04:41 AM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 95 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 10	needs triage	Fails make lint with a shellcheck not found error when the tool is missing. Unlabeled, no maintainer interaction, inactive for over a year.
2026-07-05 08:12 AM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 95 Complexity: 10 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 20	needs triage	make lint fails with exit code 127 when shellcheck is missing from the system. Unlabelled, no maintainer response, inactive for over a year.
2026-06-16 08:31 AM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 90 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 10	needs triage	make lint fails when shellcheck is missing from the system. The report remains open with no comments or assignees after over a year, awaiting triage and a fix to gracefully handle missing build dependencies.

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