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
consequentially. 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, no matter
whether the code has changed. This unnecessary work can be eliminated if only the changed files are formatted.
`treefmt` caches the changed files and marks them for re-formatting.
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](https://go.dev/), or with the help of [nix](https://github.com/NixOS/nix).
We describe the installation process in detail in the [docs](https://numtide.github.io/treefmt.go/).
## 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](https://github.com/nix-community/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](https://numtide.github.io/treefmt.go/).
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](https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormat.html) 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.
## 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.