treefmt — one CLI to format your repo
[](https://matrix.to/#/#treefmt:numtide.com)
**Status: beta**
`treefmt` streamlines the process of applying formatters to your project, making it a breeze with just one command line.
## Motivation
It’s common to format code according to the project’s standards before making contributions to any project. This task
seems trivial at first sight — you can set up the required language formatter in your IDE.
However, contributing to multiple projects requires more effort: you must change your formatter configurations each
time you switch between projects or call them manually.
Formatting requires less effort if a universal formatter for multiple languages, which is also project-specific, is in
place.
## About treefmt
`treefmt` runs all your formatters with one command. It’s easy to configure and fast to execute.
Its main features are:
- **Providing a unified CLI and output**
- You don’t need to remember which formatters are necessary for each project.
- Once you specify the formatters in the config file, you can trigger all of them with one command and get a
standardized output.
- **Running all the formatters in parallel**
- A standard script loops over your folders and runs each formatter sequentially.
- In contrast, `treefmt` runs formatters in parallel. This way, the formatting job takes less time.
- **Tracking file changes**
- When formatters are run in a script, they process all the files they encounter, regardless of whether or not
they have changed.
- `treefmt` tracks file changes, and only attempts to format files which have changed.
To reformat the whole source tree, just type `treefmt` in any folder. This is a fast and simple formatting solution.
## Installation
You can install `treefmt` by downloading the binary. Find the binaries for different architectures [here](https://github.com/numtide/treefmt-go/releases).
Otherwise, you can install the package from source code — either with [Go], or with the help of [nix].
We describe the installation process in detail in the [docs].
## Usage
In order to use `treefmt` in your project, make sure the config file `treefmt.toml` is present in the root folder and
is edited to suit your needs.
You can generate it with:
```
$ treefmt --init
```
You can then run `treefmt` in your project root folder like this:
```
$ treefmt
```
To explore the tool’s flags and options, type:
```console
$ treefmt --help
```
Additionally, there's a wrapper called [`treefmt-nix`](https://github.com/numtide/treefmt-go-nix) for using `treefmt` with [`nix`](https://github.com/NixOS/nix).
## Configuration
Formatters are specified in the config file `treefmt.toml`, which is usually located in the project root folder. The
generic way to specify a formatter is like this:
```
[formatter.]
command = ""
options = [""...]
includes = [""]
```
For example, if you want to use [nixpkgs-fmt] on your Nix project and rustfmt on your Rust project, then
`treefmt.toml` will look as follows:
```toml
[formatter.nix]
command = "nixpkgs-fmt"
includes = ["*.nix"]
[formatter.rust]
command = "rustfmt"
options = ["--edition", "2018"]
includes = ["*.rs"]
```
Before specifying the formatter in the config, make sure it’s installed.
To find and share existing formatter recipes, take a look at the [docs].
If you are a Nix user, you might also be interested in [treefmt-nix](https://github.com/numtide/treefmt-go-nix) to use Nix to configure and bring in
formatters.
## Compatibility
`treefmt` works with any formatter that adheres to the [following specification](https://github.com/numtide/treefmt-go/blob/main/docs/formatters-spec.md).
For instance, you can go for:
- [clang-format] for C/C++/Java/JavaScript/JSON/Objective-C/Protobuf/C#
- gofmt for Golang
- Prettier for JavaScript/HTML/CSS
Find the full list of supported formatters [here](https://numtide.github.io/treefmt-go/formatters).
## Upcoming features
This project is still pretty new. Down the line we also want to add support for:
- IDE integration
- Pre-commit hooks
## Related projects
- [EditorConfig](https://editorconfig.org/): unifies file indentations configuration on a per-project basis.
- [prettier](https://prettier.io/): an opinionated code formatter for a number of languages.
- [Super-Linter](https://github.com/github/super-linter): a project by GitHub to lint all of your code.
- [pre-commit](https://pre-commit.com/): a framework for managing and maintaining multi-language pre-commit hooks.
## Contributing
All contributions are welcome! We try to keep the project simple and focused. Please refer to the [Contributing](./docs/contributing.md)
guidelines for more information.
## Moving from Rust To Go
You may be familiar with [Version 1], which is written in [Rust]. So, why re-write it in [Go]?
Ultimately, `treefmt` is spending most of it's time shelling out calls to the underlying formatters. This process is
just as fast/performant in Go as it is in Rust.
The remaining tasks are processing some cli args and parsing a config file. Do we really need something as _heavy duty_
as Rust for that?
Despite all this, you can make good, sane arguments for continuing with [Version 1] in Rust instead of a re-write.
So here's a _bad argument_.
[Brian] wanted to improve performance by moving away from a [Toml] cache file, introduce pipelines for applying multiple
formatters against the same file set, and add an extensible approach for how `treefmt` walks file systems. He knows Go
much better than Rust.
[zimbatm] thought it was a good idea too.
So here we are :shrug:.
## Commercial support
Looking for help or customization?
Get in touch with [Numtide](https://numtide.com/) to get a quote. We make it easy for companies to work with Open
Source projects:
## License
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion will be licensed under the
[MIT license](LICENSE.md) without any additional terms or conditions.
[Brian]: https://github.com/brianmcgee
[zimbatm]: https://github.com/zimbatm
[Version 1]: https://github.com/numtide/treefmt
[Rust]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
[Go]: https://go.dev/
[Toml]: https://toml.io/en/
[docs]: https://numtide.github.io/treefmt-go/
[nix]: https://github.com/NixOS/nix
[nixpkgs-fmt]: https://github.com/nix-community/nixpkgs-fmt
[clang-format]: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormat.html