fold/tests/lint/README.md

Differential lint baselines

The lint workflow retains complete clang-tidy.txt and shellcheck.txt logs, then uses scripts/compare_lint_baseline.py to block only diagnostic identities that are not in the reviewed baselines in this directory.

An identity consists of the project-relative path, severity, rule, and message. Line and column are retained as evidence but excluded from identity so unrelated line movement does not turn reviewed debt into a new warning. Duplicate header diagnostics emitted through several translation units collapse to one identity.

Baseline entries are not blanket suppressions. Every entry must have status accepted-risk and either a non-empty inline rationale or a rationale_ref into the baseline's reviewed rationales map. To update a baseline:

1. Download and inspect the complete lint artifact from CI.
2. Fix actionable diagnostics where practical.
3. Add only intentionally deferred identities with a concrete rationale.
4. Record the reviewer and review timestamp.
5. Run the comparator locally and confirm that a synthetic new diagnostic still exits with status 1.

Vendored dependencies and downloaded benchmark corpora are outside the first-party ShellCheck scope. The clang-tidy lane analyzes production src/*.cpp translation units using the checked-in .clang-tidy configuration.