Overview of Nix Formatters Ecosystem

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Hey, co-author of the Nix formatting RFC here, I want to expand with some info:

  • The RFC defines an entirely new standard for how to format Nix, it doesn’t pick an existing style, and differs completely from the original nixfmt style
  • The prototype for that RFCs formatting is merely _based_on the codebase of nixfmt, mainly because it was best suited architecturally
  • Since very recently, the RFC’s formatting is exposed as a Nixpkgs attribute pkgs.nixfmt-rfc-style on unstable channels. So it’s now very easy to install and try out
  • The RFC is very close to FCP and is going to make its formatting both official and enforced for Nixpkgs, so we expect that it become the community default. Minor changes to the formatting are still happening, and there are still bugs, but it’s very close.
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