Overrides

Linguist supports a number of different custom override strategies for language definitions and file paths.

Using gitattributes

Add a .gitattributes file to your project and use standard git-style path matchers for the files you want to override using the linguist-documentation, linguist-language, linguist-vendored, linguist-generated and linguist-detectable attributes. .gitattributes will be used to determine language statistics and will be used to syntax highlight files. You can also manually set syntax highlighting using Vim or Emacs modelines.

When testing with a local installation of Linguist, take note that the added attributes will not take effect until the .gitattributes file is committed to your repository.

File and folder paths inside .gitattributes are calculated relative to the position of the .gitattributes file.

# Example of a `.gitattributes` file which reclassifies `.rb` files as Java:
*.rb linguist-language=Java

# Replace any whitespace in the language name with hyphens:
*.glyphs linguist-language=OpenStep-Property-List

# Language names are case-insensitive and may be specified using an alias.
# So, the following three lines are all functionally equivalent:
*.es linguist-language=js
*.es linguist-language=JS
*.es linguist-language=JAVASCRIPT

Summary

Git attribute	Defined in	Effect on file
`linguist-detectable`	`languages.yml`	Included in stats, even if language's type is `data` or `prose`
`linguist-documentation`	`documentation.yml`	Excluded from stats
`linguist-generated`	`generated.rb`	Excluded from stats, hidden in diffs
`linguist-language`=`name`	`languages.yml`	Highlighted and classified as `name`
`linguist-vendored`	`vendor.yml`	Excluded from stats

Detectable

By default only languages of type programming or markup in languages.yml are included in the language statistics. Languages of a different type in languages.yml are not "detectable" by default, causing them not to be included in the language statistics, but can be made detectable as shown below. Languages that are not yet mentioned in languages.yml will not be included in the language statistics, even if you specify something like *.mycola linguist-language=MyCoolLang linguist-detectable in the .gitattributes file.

Use the linguist-detectable attribute to mark or unmark paths as detectable:

*.kicad_pcb linguist-detectable
*.sch linguist-detectable
tools/export_bom.py -linguist-detectable

Documentation

Just like vendored files, Linguist excludes documentation files from your project's language stats. documentation.yml lists common documentation paths and excludes them from the language statistics for your repository.

Use the linguist-documentation attribute to mark or unmark paths as documentation:

# Apply override to all files in the directory
project-docs/* linguist-documentation
# Apply override to a specific file
docs/formatter.rb -linguist-documentation
# Apply override to all files and directories in the directory
ano-dir/** linguist-documentation

Generated code

Not all plain text files are true source files. Generated files like minified JavaScript and compiled CoffeeScript can be detected and excluded from language stats. As an added bonus, unlike vendored and documentation files, these files are suppressed in diffs. generated.rb lists common generated paths and excludes them from the language statistics of your repository.

Use the linguist-generated attribute to mark or unmark paths as generated.

Api.elm linguist-generated

Vendored code

Checking code you didn't write, such as JavaScript libraries, into your git repo is a common practice, but this often inflates your project's language stats and may even cause your project to be labeled as another language. By default, Linguist treats all of the paths defined in vendor.yml as vendored and therefore doesn't include them in the language statistics for a repository.

Use the linguist-vendored attribute to vendor or un-vendor paths:

# Apply override to all files in the directory
special-vendored-path/* linguist-vendored
# Apply override to a specific file
jquery.js -linguist-vendored
# Apply override to all files and directories in the directory
ano-dir/** linguist-vendored

Using Emacs or Vim modelines

If you do not want to use .gitattributes to override the syntax highlighting used on GitHub.com, you can use Vim or Emacs style modelines to set the language for a single file. Modelines can be placed anywhere within a file and are respected when determining how to syntax-highlight a file on GitHub.com

Vim

# Some examples of various styles:
vim: syntax=java
vim: set syntax=ruby:
vim: set filetype=prolog:
vim: set ft=cpp:

Emacs

-*- mode: php; -*-
-*- c++ -*-

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