Exit Codes¶

tally uses distinct exit codes so scripts and CI pipelines can react to different outcomes.

Code	Name	Meaning
`0`	Success	No violations found (or all violations are below `--fail-level`)
`1`	Violations	One or more violations at or above the configured `--fail-level`
`2`	Error	Configuration, parse, or I/O error (e.g. invalid config file, permission denied)
`3`	No files	No Dockerfiles to lint (missing file, empty glob, empty directory)
`4`	Syntax error	Dockerfile has fatal syntax issues (unknown instructions, malformed directives)

Examples¶

# Succeed only when there are zero issues
tally lint .
echo $?  # 0 = clean, 1 = violations

# Fail CI only on errors (ignore warnings)
tally lint --fail-level error .

# Detect "nothing to lint" separately from real errors
tally lint Dockerfile.prod
status=$?
if [ "$status" -eq 3 ]; then
  echo "No Dockerfiles found — skipping lint"
elif [ "$status" -ne 0 ]; then
  exit "$status"
fi

# Detect syntax errors (typo instructions, bad directives)
tally lint Dockerfile
status=$?
if [ "$status" -eq 4 ]; then
  echo "Dockerfile has syntax errors — fix before linting"
fi

CI/CD tips¶

Use --fail-level to control which severities cause exit code 1.
Exit code 3 lets you distinguish "the path was wrong" from "the config is broken" (code 2).
See CI/CD for pipeline examples.