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fix(dita): report dita's own error output instead of just the exit status - #1141

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jdkato merged 1 commit into
vale-cli:v3from
VXNCXNX:fix/dita-surface-stderr
Aug 19, 2026
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fix(dita): report dita's own error output instead of just the exit status#1141
jdkato merged 1 commit into
vale-cli:v3from
VXNCXNX:fix/dita-surface-stderr

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@VXNCXNX VXNCXNX commented Aug 14, 2026

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lintDITA wires the dita command's stderr into a buffer and then never reads it, so a failed conversion shows only the exit status:

E100 [a.dita] Runtime error

exit status 1

The actual diagnostic — DTD resolution failures, malformed maps, missing conrefs — is discarded.

This returns the captured stderr, the way lintXML already does at internal/lint/xml.go:45:

E100 [a.dita] Runtime error

[DOTX046E][ERROR] The DTD could not be resolved.

Fixes #578

The fallback matters

Copying lintXML verbatim (errors.New(eut.String())) would regress the case where dita exits non-zero without writing anything — the error body would be blank, which is worse than today. So the exit status is kept as a fallback:

dita behaviour before after
writes to stderr, exits 1 exit status 1 the stderr text
exits 1 silently exit status 1 exit status 1
succeeds unchanged unchanged

Verified both failing cases with a stub dita on PATH.

Worth being precise about the scope: dita writes some diagnostics to stdout rather than stderr, and those still will not appear. Only cmd.Stderr is captured here, and I did not want to conflate the two streams into one buffer since that would change what the message looks like in the common case.

go test ./internal/... passes. The DITA e2e cases are gated behind requires: dita and all cover the success path, which this does not touch.

…atus

lintDITA captured the dita command's stderr into a buffer and never read
it, so a failed conversion showed only 'Runtime error / exit status 1'
and every diagnostic was discarded.

Return the captured stderr, as lintXML already does, falling back to the
exit status when dita fails without writing anything.

Fixes vale-cli#578
@jdkato
jdkato merged commit 85ee608 into vale-cli:v3 Aug 19, 2026
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tmeijn pushed a commit to tmeijn/dotfiles that referenced this pull request Aug 21, 2026
This MR contains the following updates:

| Package | Update | Change |
|---|---|---|
| [errata-ai/vale](https://github.com/errata-ai/vale) | minor | `v3.17.1` → `v3.18.0` |

MR created with the help of [el-capitano/tools/renovate-bot](https://gitlab.com/el-capitano/tools/renovate-bot).

**Proposed changes to behavior should be submitted there as MRs.**

---

### Release Notes

<details>
<summary>errata-ai/vale (errata-ai/vale)</summary>

### [`v3.18.0`](https://github.com/vale-cli/vale/releases/tag/v3.18.0)

[Compare Source](vale-cli/vale@v3.17.1...v3.18.0)

v3.18.0 is the largest expansion of Vale's format support since v3.0.0.

[MDX](https://docs.vale.sh/formats/mdx) is now parsed natively — `mdx2vast` is no longer required. This release also adds support for four new markup formats: [Typst](https://docs.vale.sh/formats/typst) (through the new [`typst2vast`](https://github.com/jdkato/typst2vast) program), [Quarto](https://docs.vale.sh/formats/quarto), [MyST](https://docs.vale.sh/formats/myst), and [QDoc](https://docs.vale.sh/formats/qdoc). R Markdown now works out of the box, and comment extraction now covers Lua, PHP, Haskell, R, Perl, and SCSS.

Beyond formats, there's a new `meta` [scope](https://docs.vale.sh/topics/scopes) for a document's machine-readable content, a `--plain-progress` flag, and per-package logging for `vale sync` in CI — plus a long list of fixes that make alert positions and scoping more accurate across every format.

> ✨ Sponsor Spotlight
>
> Special thanks to [Promptless](https://vale.sh/sponsors/promptless) — Vale's newest sponsor and the latest to receive a [Spotlight page](https://vale.sh/sponsors/promptless). Promptless suggests doc updates when your product changes; you review, edit, and ship.

#### Changelog

- [`6c382ec`](vale-cli/vale@6c382ecd) fix: stop element-scoped rules from matching sentence fragments ([#&#8203;1150](vale-cli/vale#1150))
- [`9b9594d`](vale-cli/vale@9b9594d0) fix: don't treat a word before a code span as inline markup ([#&#8203;1147](vale-cli/vale#1147))
- [`2b159ab`](vale-cli/vale@2b159ab6) fix: stop corrupting suggestions containing 'PIPE'
- [`390dda6`](vale-cli/vale@390dda6e) fix: compile glob patterns once at construction ([#&#8203;1145](vale-cli/vale#1145))
- [`fcf0740`](vale-cli/vale@fcf07409) fix(ls-metrics): prevent panic on empty directory ([#&#8203;1144](vale-cli/vale#1144))
- [`dd09d42`](vale-cli/vale@dd09d428) fix(core): resolve Lang and Transform in section order, not map order ([#&#8203;1143](vale-cli/vale#1143))
- [`85ee608`](vale-cli/vale@85ee6088) fix(dita): report dita's own error output instead of just the exit status ([#&#8203;1141](vale-cli/vale#1141))
- [`fd8c2e0`](vale-cli/vale@fd8c2e02) refactor: satisfy revive's empty-block
- [`2f65b83`](vale-cli/vale@2f65b836) fix: close display math on any line ending with `$$` ([#&#8203;1148](vale-cli/vale#1148))
- [`e587329`](vale-cli/vale@e5873290) fix(lint): treat an HTML comment as a text boundary outside inline elements ([#&#8203;1140](vale-cli/vale#1140))
- [`4691bd3`](vale-cli/vale@4691bd36) docs: add new spotlight
- [`37cb109`](vale-cli/vale@37cb109b) feat: add `--plain-progress`
- [`12fbbd7`](vale-cli/vale@12fbbd7f) feat: log each package when sync isn't writing to a terminal
- [`9a1a16c`](vale-cli/vale@9a1a16c3) fix: mark a QDoc image that has no alt text, and publish inline ones
- [`c154ac2`](vale-cli/vale@c154ac2a) Keep the extracted text one line per source line ([#&#8203;1135](vale-cli/vale#1135))
- [`8fe9804`](vale-cli/vale@8fe98044) refactor: CLI clean up and subcommand help
- [`ae6d749`](vale-cli/vale@ae6d7496) feat: add `vale test`
- [`e5a0286`](vale-cli/vale@e5a0286a) fix: read a shebang as a POSIX path
- [`eec2f59`](vale-cli/vale@eec2f59a) fix: read a .qdocinc as the include it is, and keep meta out of prose
- [`7618d04`](vale-cli/vale@7618d044) fix: only hand the Docutils source to a Python interpreter
- [`b596b0d`](vale-cli/vale@b596b0dc) fix: stop a string run's helper processes the way a file run does
- [`f3f3402`](vale-cli/vale@f3f34021) fix: keep `vale off` working when QDoc prose is escaped
- [`54efd3b`](vale-cli/vale@54efd3bb) fix: escape QDoc markup
- [`5666297`](vale-cli/vale@5666297b) fix: treat a snippet marker inside a QDoc comment as markup
- [`c2d1a55`](vale-cli/vale@c2d1a559) feat: add a meta scope for a document's machine-readable content
- [`33e4012`](vale-cli/vale@33e40124) fix: close QDoc's code blocks on the right command, and scope its divs
- [`5ae4867`](vale-cli/vale@5ae48670) fix: read only `/*!` as QDoc, and cover commands
- [`e60b5bc`](vale-cli/vale@e60b5bc3) fix: keep a rule's level in the section that set it
- [`c1e2fa0`](vale-cli/vale@c1e2fa01) fix: honor IgnoredScopes when a markup format is mapped onto source
- [`85c1343`](vale-cli/vale@85c13436) fix: place a match inside a block that inline markup rewrote
- [`b47ccb0`](vale-cli/vale@b47ccb06) fix: don't mask an autolink's URL twice
- [`65f5687`](vale-cli/vale@65f5687f) fix: skip `$…$` inline math
- [`b3bade4`](vale-cli/vale@b3bade4b) fix: lint a tight list item's own text as its own block
- [`4a6b7cf`](vale-cli/vale@4a6b7cfd) Don't lint a shebang as a comment ([#&#8203;1134](vale-cli/vale#1134))
- [`77179c0`](vale-cli/vale@77179c0a) fix: report spans against the file's actual bytes
- [`7f429e3`](vale-cli/vale@7f429e31) test: pin issue 1007's frontmatter and blockquote scenarios
- [`b049e35`](vale-cli/vale@b049e35f) feat: support the .scss extension
- [`b678b8d`](vale-cli/vale@b678b8d9) test: add QML case
- [`e82432d`](vale-cli/vale@e82432d7) feat: extract Lua, PHP, Haskell, R, and Perl comments with tree-sitter
- [`0e2f8bf`](vale-cli/vale@0e2f8bf3) eat: support QML sources via qml = qdoc
- [`cc710aa`](vale-cli/vale@cc710aa2) fix: treat only block comments as QDoc documentation
- [`bd1f33a`](vale-cli/vale@bd1f33a6) ci: install typst2vast, drop mdx2vast
- [`9708be6`](vale-cli/vale@9708be61) feat: support Typst
- [`15115bf`](vale-cli/vale@15115bfb) fix: place a rewritten block by its longest word, not its last
- [`5c91639`](vale-cli/vale@5c916393) fix: skip a repeated match's prior occurrences by count, not by masking
- [`db8c83c`](vale-cli/vale@db8c83cf) feat: support QDoc
- [`fca7b79`](vale-cli/vale@fca7b79b) feat: support Quarto
- [`286fc59`](vale-cli/vale@286fc59a) feat: parse MDX natively, dropping mdx2vast
- [`fedaf20`](vale-cli/vale@fedaf204) feat: support MyST
- [`eec788d`](vale-cli/vale@eec788d8) fix: read the character actually beside a match for inline code
- [`590278e`](vale-cli/vale@590278e5) feat: lint R Markdown out of the box
- [`4d8e228`](vale-cli/vale@4d8e2289) fix: strip tab indentation from block comments ([#&#8203;1131](vale-cli/vale#1131))
- [`02fb654`](vale-cli/vale@02fb6547) fix: switch on what every term of a chained scope needs
- [`f011cb0`](vale-cli/vale@f011cb02) fix: keep 'scope: paragraph' out of headings, tables, lists, and blockquotes

</details>

---

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Runtime error for the dita file

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