Use zprint with a team

When developing Clojure(script) software in a team environment, it can be very useful to use a common formatting tool such as zprint. There are three issues in this environment:

1. Decide if you want all files to be formatted identically
2. Ensure that all members of your group use zprint the same way
3. Check to see if the files are formatted correctly

1. Decide if you want all files to be formatted identically

Yes: I want to use zprint to enforce a particular source code format

Classic zprint will do exactly that -- it will reformat every file you give it into what it thinks is the optimal format. Classic zprint is highly (some might say "overly") configurable, and can be configured to reproduce most common Clojure source formatting styles. If you have trouble configuring zprint to do what you want, submit an issue (with an example of what you want), and I'll be glad to help find a way to configure zprint to do what you want.

No: I want to let team members control the source code format of their files to some degree

There are three different ways to get zprint to recognize the existing formatting while still cleaning things up to varying degrees:

Just clean up the indentation and white space: {:style :indent-only}

You can use zprint's {:style :indent-only} to clean up the indentation and white space in files, without otherwise changing their basic format.

Enforce the configured format, but keep all blank lines: {:style :respect-bl}

zprint's {:style :respect-bl} will enforce a particular format on the file -- with the exception of blank lines, which it will always keep. For many people, having the blank lines they put in the file stay there, and having zprint format everything around those blank lines is a nice mix between enforcing a particular format, and giving people some latitude to format things "their way".

Keep all of the newlines, and enforce what is possible around that: {:style :respect-nl}

zprint's {:style :respect-nl} will keep all of the newlines in the file. zprint will add newlines as necessary to try to keep things within the width as well as format functions as they are configured to be formatted. This is a real middle ground between {:style :indent-only} and classic zprint.

2. Ensure that all members of your group use zprint the same way

Whether you are using zprint to enforce a particular format, or simply to clean up the existing format in your team's source files, it is important to have all members of your team using the same zprint configuration.

zprint can read its configuration from several different places:

• $HOME/.zprintrc
• a .zprintrc file in a project
• a URL of a zprintrc file

For personal use, keeping the zprint configuration in $HOME/.zprintrc is convenient. However, when you want different formatting conventions for different projects, or when working with other team members, locating the zprint configuration with the project files can be a simpler solution.

Look here for information about how to keep zprint configuration information local to a project.

3. Check to see if files are formatted correctly

As part of a build or commit process you can use zprint to enforce a particular format in source files by formatting all files. You can also use zprint to check the format of files and exit with a non-zero exit status if it encounters files that are not formatted as it would if asked to format the file.

To format all .clj files in the current directory:

% zprint -w *.clj

To check all .clj files in the current directory, exiting with an exit status equal to the number of files that require formatting:

% zprint -c *.clj

There are additional options to each switch, for instance this will output a summary of the results when all of the files are processed:

% zprint -sw *.clj
% zprint -sc *.clj

See this discussion about using the pre-built binaries for more useful details on the several options for use with -w and -c switches.