nixfmt is a formatter for Nix code, intended to easily apply a uniform style.

You are encouraged to test this out on your code and submit any undesirable formatting you find as an issue

nixfmt will form the basis for the initial official standard Nix formatter, as established by RFC 166.

The established standard Nix formatting differs considerably from the original one. Be aware of this if you track the main branch. Until the first new release the main branch should be considered very unstable.

For more details, see the RFC implementation tracking issue.

nixfmt was used as the basis for the official Nix formatter with a standardized formatting. The new formatting differs considerably from the original one. A recent nixfmt version is available as pkgs.nixfmt-rfc-style in Nixpkgs. The formatting of this version differs considerably from the original nixfmt that was used as the basis for the standardised official formatter, which is also still available as pkgs.nixfmt-classic for now, though unmaintained.

So installing this nixfmt is as simple as adding to the system packages:

{ pkgs, ... }:

{
  environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.nixfmt-rfc-style ];
}

It's also possible to install nixfmt directly from the repository using nix-env. Also, updates are not done automatically (as it would with the system packages).

$ nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixfmt/archive/master.tar.gz -i

nix fmt (which is a flakes-only feature) can be configured by adding the following to flake.nix (assuming a nixpkgs input exists):

{
  outputs =
    { nixpkgs, self }:
    {
      formatter.x86_64-linux = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.nixfmt-rfc-style;
    };
}

treefmt can be used to format repositories consisting of different languages with one command. A possible configuration for nixfmt in treefmt.toml looks like this:

[formatter.nixfmt-rfc-style]
command = "nixfmt"
includes = ["*.nix"]

This only works when nixfmt-rfc-style is installed (see above for installation instructions).

treefmt can be integrated into text editors and CI to ensure consistent formatting for all filetypes.

treefmt-nix automatically configures the correct packages and formatters using a Nix configuration and has native support for nixfmt:

# ...
treefmt-nix.mkWrapper nixpkgs {
  # ... other options ...
  programs.nixfmt-rfc-style.enable = true;
}

More information about configuration can be found in the README.

git-hooks.nix can automatically configure git hooks like pre-commit using nix configuration and has native support for nixfmt:

{
  pre-commit-check = nix-pre-commit-hooks.run {
    # ... other options ...
    hooks = {
      # ... other hooks ...
      nixfmt-rfc-style.enable = true;
    };
  };
}

If you have Nix files in a Git repo and you want to make sure that they’re formatted with nixfmt, then you can use the pre-commit tool from pre-commit.com:

1. Make sure that you have the pre-commit command:

   $ pre-commit --version
   pre-commit 3.7.1

2. Make sure that you’re in your Git repo:

   $ cd <path-to-git-repo>

3. Make sure that the pre-commit tool is installed as a Git pre-commit hook:

   $ pre-commit install
   pre-commit installed at .git/hooks/pre-commit

4. If you don’t already have one, then create a .pre-commit-config.yaml file.

5. Add an entry for the nixfmt hook to your .pre-commit-config.yaml file:

   repos:
       - repo: https://github.com/NixOS/nixfmt
         rev: <version>
         hooks:
               - id: nixfmt

   If you want to use a stable version of nixfmt, then replace <version> with a tag from this repo. If you want to use an unstable version of nixfmt, then replace <version> with a commit hash from this repo.

6. Try to commit a badly formatted Nix file in order to make sure that everything works.

local nvim_lsp = require("lspconfig")
nvim_lsp.nixd.setup({
   settings = {
      nixd = {
         formatting = {
            command = { "nixfmt" },
         },
      },
   },
})

This only works when nixfmt-rfc-style is installed (see above for installation instructions).

local nvim_lsp = require("lspconfig")
nvim_lsp.nil_ls.setup({
   settings = {
      ['nil'] = {
         formatting = {
            command = { "nixfmt" },
         },
      },
   },
})

This only works when nixfmt-rfc-style is installed (see above for installation instructions).

local null_ls = require("null-ls")
null_ls.setup({
    sources = {
        null_ls.builtins.formatting.nixfmt,
    },
})

This only works when nixfmt-rfc-style is installed (see above for installation instructions).

Nixfmt provides a mode usable by git mergetool via --mergetool that allows resolving formatting-related conflicts automatically in many cases.

It can be installed by any of these methods:

• For only for the current repo, run:

  git config mergetool.nixfmt.cmd 'nixfmt --mergetool "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"'
  git config mergetool.nixfmt.trustExitCode true
  

• For all repos with a mutable config file, run

  git config --global mergetool.nixfmt.cmd 'nixfmt --mergetool "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"'
  git config --global mergetool.nixfmt.trustExitCode true
  

• For all repos with a NixOS-provided config file, add this to your configuration.nix:

  programs.git.config = {
    mergetool.nixfmt = {
      cmd = "nixfmt --mergetool \"$BASE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" \"$MERGED\"";
      trustExitCode = true;
    };
  };

• For all repos with a home-manager-provided config file, add this to your home.nix:

  programs.git.extraConfig = {
    mergetool.nixfmt = {
      cmd = "nixfmt --mergetool \"$BASE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" \"$MERGED\"";
      trustExitCode = true;
    };
  };

Then, when git merge or git rebase fails, run

git mergetool -t nixfmt .
# or, only for some specific files
git mergetool -t nixfmt FILE1 FILE2 FILE3

and some .nix files will probably get merged automagically.

Note that files that git merges successfully even before git mergetool will be ignored by `git mergetool`.

If you don't like the result, run

git restore --merge .
# or, only for some specific files
git restore --merge FILE1 FILE2 FILE3

to return back to the unmerged state.

Haskell dependencies will be built by Nix.

• Enter nix-shell
• Build with cabal new-build

Haskell dependencies will be built by Cabal.

• Build with cabal new-build

• nixfmt < input.nix – reads Nix code from stdin, formats it, and outputs to stdout
• nixfmt file.nix – format the file in place

nixfmt is maintained and funded with ❤️ by Serokell. The names and logo for Serokell are trademark of Serokell OÜ.

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