Install api-linter with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• api-linter

Project history

The public GitHub repository was created in 2019 under googleapis. The README and official documentation frame the tool as a companion to Google's AIP guidance: it can identify common mistakes in API surfaces, offer fixes where possible, and document individual lint rules.

The project explicitly does not follow strict semantic versioning. Its README explains that new or corrected lint rules can be breaking for users because previously clean files may begin reporting findings, so release numbers reflect the linter's core interface rather than a pure compatibility promise.

Adoption history

api-linter is most naturally adopted by teams designing protobuf APIs in the Google style. The README documents installation with Go and notes a Google-internal released binary for internal source control users, while the batch input shows Homebrew and Nix packaging for external command-line installation.

How it is used

The basic invocation is api-linter followed by one or more proto files. It supports proto import paths, descriptor sets, rule listing, structured output formats such as YAML, JSON, GitHub, and summary, and a set-exit-status flag for CI enforcement.

Configuration is supplied explicitly through the --config flag or inline proto comments. The official configuration docs show JSON and YAML config examples that enable or disable rules by included or excluded path, but they do not document a default config-file path, so no config-file-location is recorded here.

Why package nerds care

For package-manager users, api-linter is a compact example of policy-as-CLI: it packages a large body of API-design convention into a reproducible binary. It matters to protobuf-heavy shops because it can be pinned, run in presubmit checks, and upgraded deliberately when new lint rules land.

Timeline

• 2019: Public googleapis/api-linter repository created.
• 2025: Version 2.0.0 released, marking a major core-interface version.
• 2026: Versions 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 continued rule and interface evolution.

Related projects

• The linter is tied to API Improvement Proposals at aip.dev and to Protocol Buffers API definitions. It is adjacent to protobuf compilers, buf-based linting workflows, and API governance tooling.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/googleapis/api-linter
• https://github.com/googleapis/api-linter#readme
• https://linter.aip.dev/
• https://linter.aip.dev/configuration
• input source_facts.package-manager