git-fmt

(Side note: the formatting component of this project will eventually be split out and named omnifmt.)

git-fmt was created to make prettifying code easy. It adds a custom (easy to use) command to Git that formats code through external pretty-printers.

Formatted code is:

• Easier to write: never worry about minor formatting concerns while hacking away.
• Easier to read: when all code looks the same you need not mentally convert others' formatting style into something you can understand.
• Easier to maintain: mechanical changes to the source don't cause unrelated changes to the file's formatting; diffs show only the real changes.
• Uncontroversial: never have a debate about spacing or brace position ever again.

(Bullet points taken from https://blog.golang.org/go-fmt-your-code.)

Installing

Installing git-fmt is easiest done using either stack (recommended) or Cabal.

Using stack:

stack install git-fmt
export PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin

Using Cabal:

cabal-install git-fmt
export PATH=$PATH:~/.cabal/bin

Usage

The git-fmt binary provides an interface for selecting files and piping them through external pretty-printers. It supports both prettifying the files immediately and performing dry-runs to see which files are ugly.

The basics:

git-fmt operates only on tracked git files (thus it implicitly respects the '.gitignore' file). By default it operates on files in the index (i.e., --operate-on head). It is possible to operate on all tracked files (--operate-on-tracked) or on a specific reference (--operate-on REF). The REF argument is passed directly into git diff REF --name-only, so you can even play with ranges such as master....

Passing arguments to git-fmt will narrow down the operation files. For example, git fmt --operate-on-tracked src/ will format all tracked files under 'src/' and git fmt --operate-on head src/ will format all files in the index under 'src/'.

Modes:

git-fmt can run in three different modes, normal, dry-run and diff.

Normal mode writes to (prettifies) all ugly files immediately and outputs the prettified file paths to stdout.

Dry-run mode outputs the ugly file paths to stdout.

Diff mode outputs a diff of all ugly files with their prettified version. By default the diff isn't paged, so to get output similar to git diff or git log it is recommended to use [-p|--paginate] with this mode, e.g., git -p fmt -m diff.

NB: it isn't possible to pipe the diff into git apply due to the destination file path header.

Configuration

Configuration is done via an '.omnifmt.yaml' file in the git repository. The file contains a list of programs that link extensions to a prettifying command, e.g.,

haskell:
    extensions: ["hs", "lhs"]
    command:    "stylish-haskell {{input}} > {{output}}"

javascript:
    extensions: ["js"]
    command:    "js-beautify -f {{input}}"

json:
    extensions: ["json"]
    command:    "json_pp"

ruby:
    extensions: ["rb"]
    command:    "ruby-beautify"

Each command declares how to read the input file and how to write to the output file. If the input variable is omitted, the file contents are fed to the command through stdin. Likewise if the output variable is omitted, the pretty contents are read from stdout. The output file is used to compare whether the original was pretty or ugly before writing to it.

The extensions field is pretty self explanatory, but if you use the same extension more than once then precedence goes to the program defined first.

Examples

See the docs/example-configs/ directory for some common pretty-printers and their corresponding omnifmt config (pull requests are welcome for adding more). Just don't forget to actually call the config file .omnifmt.yaml!

NB: I haven't tested them fully, be careful in case one is buggy.