initial linting and pre-commit content

Signed-off-by: Kevin Broch <kbroch@rivosinc.com>

book_header.adoc

@@ -56,15 +56,25 @@ This document is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
 
 //the colophon allows for a section after the preamble that is part of the frontmatter and therefore not assigned a page number.
 include::colophon.adoc[]
+
 //While some documents need several levels of introductory material, other documents only need a breif introduction. You can choose to have either colophon or an overview, or to have both.
 //include::overview.adoc[]
 include::authoring.adoc[]
+
 include::a_few_basics.adoc[]
+
 include::tables_graphics.adoc[]
+
 include::blocks_notes_markers.adoc[]
+
 include::wavedrom_edit.adoc[]
+
 include::writing.adoc[]
+
+include::linting.adoc[]
+
 //please note that the index must precede the bibliography for both to work within the same book.
 include::index.adoc[]
+
 include::bibliography.adoc[]
 

linting.adoc

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+== Linting
+
+The linting of code/documentation can be categorized as dealing with formatting, syntax, or semantics.  Once the rules for a given project are defined, many of these rules can be checked automatically with tooling.
+
+=== Tooling
+
+link:https://pre-commit.com/[pre-commit tool] is a very useful, open source, well maintained, and popular tool/framework to help automate linting checks in general.  It provides some of the following key features:
+
+* link:https://pre-commit.com/hooks.html[a great number of support hooks for linting]
+** including direct support by many of the maintainers of best in class linters (ex: link:https://github.com/psf/black[python linter black])
+** link:https://pre-commit.com/index.html#plugins[hook plugins] allow adding these and versioning to control updates
+* support for link:https://pre-commit.com/index.html#new-hooks[creating new custom hooks easily]
+* can be run before `git commit` (i.e. "pre-commit") so authors can detect and fix problems sooner in the workflow
+* can also be run in link:https://pre-commit.com/index.html#github-actions-example[continuous integration (CI)] to enforce checks are run for every pull request