How to Run ShellCheck on Scripts in GitHub Actions

Shell scripts hide quoting and word-splitting bugs that only break in production; ShellCheck finds them in CI.

Run ShellCheck against every tracked .sh file so warnings and errors fail the job.

Steps

• Collect the shell scripts to lint (a glob or git ls-files).
• Run shellcheck against them, optionally with -S error to gate only on errors at first.
• Fix or annotate findings; tighten the severity over time.

Workflow

name: ShellCheck
on: [pull_request]
jobs:
  shellcheck:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Run ShellCheck
        run: |
          mapfile -t files < <(git ls-files '*.sh')
          shellcheck "${files[@]}"

Notes

• ShellCheck ships preinstalled on GitHub-hosted Ubuntu images, so no install step is needed.
• On Latchkey managed runners script-lint jobs run cheaper and self-heal if a runner dies.

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