How to set up vale as a linter for text in neovim

Oct 29, 2024. 150 words. 1 minute. In Tech. neovim vale linter

tl;dr:How to set up vale correctly by creating a config file and syncing it once.

This is just a quick fix for a linter setup problem that I would like to save for myself and anyone running into the same issue in the future.

After installing the vale linter for general text like Markdown, I got the following error every time any kind of text file was opened:

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Linter command `vale` exited with code: 2

It is a bit tricky to find out what is actually going on here. Some more analysis of log files reveals that some config file is not found.

I found the solution for the problem in this GitHub issue.

It comes down to creating a simple .vale.ini in ~/.config/vale/ for example with the following content:

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StylesPath = .
MinAlertLevel = suggestion
Packages = RedHat, alex
[*]
BasedOnStyles = Vale, RedHat, alex

Then we simply run:

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~/.local/share/nvim/mason/packages/vale/vale --config=$HOME/.config/vale/.vale.ini sync

And now it simply works.