xplat-checks

Cross-platform compatibility issues in Python code are detected by scanning source files for hardcoded path separators, line endings, environment variables, shell usage, and temp path patterns. This process surfaces portability problems that commonly cause runtime bugs or CI failures across operating systems.

Cross-platform portability problems between Windows and Linux are typically caused by hardcoded path separators, inconsistent line endings, case sensitivity issues, and hardcoded temp paths. Shell command usage and environment variable handling also contribute to broken code execution across different operating systems.

Static analysis for cross-platform portability can be integrated into CI workflows by running scanner scripts that output machine-readable results. These deterministic checks identify OS-specific patterns in Python files and other text-based sources to catch issues during development or pull requests.

The xplat-checks scanner works on Python files and other text-based sources to detect portability issues. It evaluates codebases running on Windows and Linux, analyzing patterns like environment variable usage and line endings across the entire project rather than limiting checks to Python exclusively.

Static analysis for portability issues is limited to detecting hardcoded patterns in source files, such as path separators and shell usage. It identifies deterministic code-quality issues but does not execute the application to catch runtime environment variables or OS-specific dynamic behaviors that cause CI failures.