Hi folks In the last ten years or so, source code formatters with limited/no configuration have become popular. Go is the most well-known example, shipping with gofmt, but there are similar tools in Rust, JavaScript, Python, and Elixir.
Clojure and Lisps, in general, have historically allowed very flexible formatting of s-expressions. This can aid readability but adds a cognitive overhead for readers used to different styles. It can also be challenging to match existing source code formatting if you are using a different editor to the original author. *I believe it would be useful for the Clojure community to be able to develop (or adopt) a single source-code formatter which is able to format Clojure source code to a canonical format.* It seems unlikely that 100% (maybe not even 50%) of the community would want such a tool, but I feel like there is enough desire for a common formatting tool that this could still be valuable. I've created a discussion thread <https://clojureverse.org/t/clj-commons-building-a-formatter-like-gofmt-for-clojure/3240> on ClojureVerse about building a Clojure/ClojureScript source code formatter as part of CLJ Commons <https://clj-commons.org/>. There are a few differences in goals between this tool and the existing ones that exist. I go into more detail in the thread, but I'm proposing the creation of * A fairly canonical format for Clojure code, e.g. reindenting code, reformatting namespace declarations. A format that has idiomatic opinions. * A formatting spec and test suite that multiple different tools and editors can implement, not a spec defined by the implementation of a single tool. * The creation of a reference implementation formatter. * A formatter with few (maybe zero?) options It's possible that 10 years after Clojure's creation, it's going to be too difficult for the community to coalesce around a canonical format, and it will be necessary to add some configuration options. I'm not really sure, which is why I'm asking for community members to join in the discussion. I realise that I'm touching the third rail <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_of_politics> here, and lots of people have strong opinions about formatting. I don't expect that everyone would like or want to adopt such a strict formatting tool, and that's totally ok! For those of you that *do* like the idea of building/having such a tool, please jump in on the discussion on ClojureVerse, and on a GitHub repo discussing the different aspects of formatting at https://github.com/clj-commons/formatter. Thanks, Daniel. -- Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ClojureScript" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojurescript+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to clojurescript@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.
