zorilla

A small, fast, opinionated Rust CLI that detects syntactic test smells in pytest codebases. Built to compose with biston (structural test duplication) and with ruff's PT rules — zorilla owns only the gaps those two leave behind.

Status: v0.1 ready. Ships eight rules (ZR001–ZR008), inline and file-level suppression comments, text / json / sarif output formats, a list-rules / explain pair, and a pre-commit hook.

Installation

zorilla is distributed as a Python wheel built with maturin.

# once published
pip install zorilla
# or, for a local checkout (requires an activated venv)
maturin develop

This installs a zorilla binary on your PATH.

maturin develop needs an activated Python virtualenv — either source .venv/bin/activate first, or export VIRTUAL_ENV=/path/to/venv. Having the venv's bin/ on PATH is not sufficient.

Usage

zorilla check path/to/tests

Exit codes: 0 clean, 1 findings reported, 2 error.

--files PATH (repeatable) and --files-from FILE (use - for stdin) accept explicit file lists, bypassing the configured include globs — useful for CI pipelines.

Rules

Long-form docs (motivation, positive/negative examples, config knobs, suppression syntax) live under docs/rules/. You can also print them inline with zorilla explain ZR### — see below.

Worked example

Save as tests/test_demo.py:

import time

def test_branch_and_wait():
    if ready():
        time.sleep(1)
        assert done()

Run:

$ zorilla check .
tests/test_demo.py:4:5: ZR001 conditional-test-logic: test function has conditional logic (if/for/while/try)
tests/test_demo.py:5:9: ZR002 sleep-in-test: test calls sleep — wait on a condition instead
2 findings in 1 files discovered.

Findings are not verdicts. Run `zorilla guide triage` for the remedy ladder, including when `# zorilla: ignore -- <reason>` is the right answer.

zorilla exits with status 1 because findings were reported. A clean run (or an empty directory) exits 0; an internal error exits 2.

Output formats

zorilla check --format json .

emits a JSON array, one object per finding — suitable for piping into jq or a CI aggregator:

[
  {
    "code": "ZR001",
    "message": "test function has conditional logic (if/for/while/try)",
    "file": "tests/test_demo.py",
    "line": 4,
    "column": 5,
    "severity": "warning"
  }
]

zorilla check --format sarif .

emits a SARIF 2.1.0 document that most code-scanning tools (GitHub code scanning, SonarQube, etc.) ingest directly:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oasis-tcs/sarif-spec/master/Schemata/sarif-schema-2.1.0.json",
  "version": "2.1.0",
  "runs": [
    {
      "tool": { "driver": { "name": "zorilla", "version": "0.1.0" } },
      "results": [
        {
          "ruleId": "ZR001",
          "level": "warning",
          "message": { "text": "test function has conditional logic (if/for/while/try)" },
          "locations": [ /* ...physicalLocation... */ ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

JSON and SARIF output both omit the trailing human-readable summary line so stdout parses cleanly.

Scan statistics

zorilla stats post-processes a scan into aggregate counters and a per-rule breakdown. Use it for CI dashboards, quick health checks, or a high-level snapshot of how many tests are flagged and by which rules. Unlike check, it always exits 0 — it is a report, not a gate.

$ zorilla stats path/to/tests
Scan statistics:
  Files scanned:        12
  Files with findings:  3
  Clean files:          9
  Total findings:       7

Breakdown by rule:
  ZR001 conditional-test-logic:  2
  ZR002 sleep-in-test:           1
  ZR003 no-assertion:            4
  ZR004 assertion-roulette:      0
  ZR005 mystery-guest:           0
  ZR006 patch-stack:             0
  ZR007 empty-test:              0
  ZR008 context-patch-stack:     0

Add --format json to emit a parseable summary (flat counters plus a breakdown object keyed by rule code). --files and --files-from work the same way they do for check.

Per-file overview

zorilla overview groups findings by file. Files are sorted by finding count (most-flagged first), and files that produced no findings are rolled up into a trailing count — useful when triaging a large repo. Like stats, it always exits 0 and accepts --files / --files-from.

$ zorilla overview path/to/tests
Overview: 12 files, 7 findings in 3 files

tests/test_orders.py  3 findings
  ● 12:5  ZR003 no-assertion           test has no assertion
  ● 25:5  ZR001 conditional-test-logic test function has conditional logic (if/for/while/try)
  ● 25:9  ZR002 sleep-in-test          test calls sleep — wait on a condition instead

tests/test_returns.py  2 findings
  ● 7:5   ZR003 no-assertion           test has no assertion
  ● 18:5  ZR003 no-assertion           test has no assertion

9 clean files not shown.

Findings are not verdicts. Run `zorilla guide triage` for the remedy ladder, including when `# zorilla: ignore -- <reason>` is the right answer.

The bullet (●) is coloured by severity — yellow for warnings, red for errors — when stdout is a terminal. overview honours the NO_COLOR convention, and emits plain bullets when output is piped or redirected. Add --format json to get the same data as a structured document (summary, files, clean_files) suitable for dashboards or scripting.

Guide

zorilla guide prints short, imperative instructions for the three moments someone — or a coding agent — meets zorilla. With no topic it picks between setup and triage by looking at the current directory and every directory above it, stopping at the repository root:

$ zorilla guide
# zorilla guide: configured via pyproject.toml [tool.zorilla] -> triage
...

tune is a reference and is never auto-selected. The prose lives in docs/guide/ and is compiled into the binary with include_str!, so the files and the CLI serve the same bytes.

Any check or overview text report that has findings ends with a one-line footer pointing back at zorilla guide triage — the breadcrumb from a failed gate to the instructions for clearing it. JSON and SARIF never carry it.

List and explain

$ zorilla list-rules
CODE  NAME                      DEFAULT
ZR001 conditional-test-logic    on
ZR002 sleep-in-test             on
ZR003 no-assertion              on
ZR004 assertion-roulette        on
ZR005 mystery-guest             on
ZR006 patch-stack               on
ZR007 empty-test                on
ZR008 context-patch-stack       on

$ zorilla explain ZR003
# ZR003 — no-assertion
…

explain accepts the rule code in either case (ZR003 or zr003) and prints the bundled markdown. Unknown codes exit 2.

Pre-commit integration

Add zorilla to your project's .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/mojzis/zorilla
    rev: v0.2.1
    hooks:
      - id: zorilla

The hook entry point is zorilla check; pre-commit appends only the staged Python files as positional arguments, so zorilla lints each one directly (bypassing the include globs the way any explicit file path does). Replace the rev: with whichever tag is current when you wire the hook up.

Configuration

zorilla searches upward from the working directory for either zorilla.toml or a pyproject.toml containing [tool.zorilla]. The first match wins.

# pyproject.toml
[tool.zorilla]
include = ["tests/**/*.py", "**/test_*.py", "**/*_test.py", "**/conftest.py"]
exclude = ["**/fixtures/**"]

[tool.zorilla.rules.ZR004]
max_asserts = 4

[tool.zorilla.rules.ZR006]
max_patches = 3

Per-rule sections ([tool.zorilla.rules.ZRNNN]) accept enabled = false to disable the rule and any rule-specific knobs (max_asserts for ZR004, max_patches for ZR006, extra_helpers for ZR003, allowed_prefixes for ZR005). See docs/rules/ for the exhaustive list.

zorilla guide tune prints the whole reference — knobs, scope globs, suppression syntax and precedence — without leaving the terminal.

Suppression comments work per-line and per-file:

# zorilla: ignore-file                              <- silences the whole file
def test_x():
    if cond:  # zorilla: ignore[ZR001]              <- silences just this line
        ...

Developing

# Pre-commit gate
cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspace

# Maturin develop build
maturin develop

Workspace layout:

crates/
  zorilla-core/   # library
  zorilla-cli/    # binary (`zorilla`)

See CLAUDE.md for the development workflow and docs/plans/PLAN.md for the design doc driving the rule set.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.