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OCamlFormat is a tool to format OCaml code.
OCamlFormat works by parsing source code using the OCaml compiler's standard parser, deciding where to place comments in the parse tree, and writing the parse tree and comments in a consistent style.
See the source code of OCamlFormat itself and Infer for examples of the styles of code it produces.
Hello, new user! Welcome! :wave:
If you are here, you are probably interested in using a formatting tool for your code base, so that you do not have to worry about formatting it by hand, and to speed up code review by focusing on the important parts.
OCamlFormat is probably what you are after! But there are some things that you should know before formatting all the things.
OCamlFormat is already being used by several projects, but it comes with some important caveats. This FAQ should help you decide if it can work for you.
OCamlFormat is beta software. While we do not follow SemVer, we expect the program to change considerably before we reach version 1.0.0. In particular, upgrading the ocamlformat
package will cause your program to get reformatted. Sometimes it is relatively pain-free, but sometimes it will make a diff in almost every file. This can be a hard price to pay, since this means losing the corresponding git history.
If you use a custom configuration, options you rely on might also get removed in a later release.
Moreover if you adopt OCamlFormat in one project it will not break your workflow in your other projects. Indeed OCamlFormat modifies a file only if it can find an .ocamlformat
file, so adding a save hook in your editor will only simplify your workflow in projects using OCamlFormat.
The recommended way is to use a versioned default profile, such as:
version=0.18.0
(or replace with the output of ocamlformat --version
)
This ensures two things:
No. It is better to see OCamlFormat as a tool to apply a style, rather than a tweakable tool to enforce your existing style. There are some knobs that you can turn, such as overriding margin
to determine the maximum line width. But it is better not to set individual options to override what the default profile is doing.
To quote (and sed) prettier's page on option philosophy:
To disable the formatting of a specific toplevel item you must attach an [@@ocamlformat "option=VAL"]
attribute to this item in the processed file, such as:
let do_not_touch
(x : t)
(y : t)
(z : t) = [
x; y; z
] [@@ocamlformat "disable"]
To disable the formatting of a specific expression you must attach an [@ocamlformat "option=VAL"]
attribute to this expression in the processed file, such as:
let do_not_touch (x : t) (y : t) (z : t) = [
x; y; z
] [@ocamlformat "disable"]
To disable a whole file, the preferred way is to add the name of the file to a local .ocamlformat-ignore
file. An .ocamlformat-ignore
file specifies files that OCamlFormat should ignore. Each line in an .ocamlformat-ignore
file specifies a filename relative to the directory containing the .ocamlformat-ignore
file. Shell-style regular expressions are supported. Lines starting with #
are ignored and can be used as comments.
OCamlFormat requires source code that meets the following conditions:
.ml
), an interface (.mli
) or a sequence of toplevel phrases (.mlt
). dune files in OCaml syntax also work.Under those conditions, OCamlFormat is expected to produce output equivalent to the input. As a safety check in case of bugs, prior to terminating or modifying any input file, OCamlFormat enforces the following checks:
Normalize
.equal_impl
or equal_intf
).There are a number of preset code style profiles, selected using the --profile
option by passing --profile=<name>
on the command line or adding profile = <name>
to an .ocamlformat configuration file. Each profile is a collection of settings for all options, overriding lower priority configuration of individual options. So a profile can be selected and then individual options can be overridden if desired.
The conventional
or default
profile aims to be as familiar and "conventional" appearing as the available options allow.
The ocamlformat
profile aims to take advantage of the strengths of a parsetree-based auto-formatter, and to limit the consequences of the weaknesses imposed by the current implementation. This is a style which optimizes for what the formatter can do best, rather than to match the style of any existing code. Instead of familiarity, the focus is on legibility, keeping the common cases reasonably compact while attempting to avoid confusing formatting in corner cases. General guidelines that have directed the design include:
The compact
profile is similar to ocamlformat
but opts for a generally more compact code style.
The sparse
profile is similar to ocamlformat
but opts for a generally more sparse code style.
If no profile is selected, the conventional
one is used.
The full options' documentation is available in [ocamlformat-help.txt] and through ocamlformat --help
. Options can be modified by the means of:
option = VAL
lineOCAMLFORMAT
environment variable: OCAMLFORMAT=option=VAL,...,option=VAL
[@@@ocamlformat "option=VAL"]
attribute in the processed file[@@ocamlformat "option=VAL"]
attribute on an expression in the processed file.ocamlformat files in the containing and all ancestor directories for each input file are used, as well as the global .ocamlformat file defined in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ocamlformat
. The global .ocamlformat file has the lowest priority, then the closer the directory is to the processed file, the higher the priority.
When the option --enable-outside-detected-project
is not set, .ocamlformat files outside of the project (including the one in XDG_CONFIG_HOME
) are not read. The project root of an input file is taken to be the nearest ancestor directory that contains a .git or .hg or dune-project file. If no config file is found, formatting is disabled.
An .ocamlformat-ignore
file specifies files that OCamlFormat should ignore. Each line in an .ocamlformat-ignore
file specifies a filename relative to the directory containing the .ocamlformat-ignore
file. Lines starting with #
are ignored and can be used as comments.
OCamlFormat can be installed with opam
:
opam install ocamlformat
Alternately, see ocamlformat.opam
for manual build instructions.
As mentioned in the Options section, when the option --disable-outside-detected-project
is set, .ocamlformat files outside of the project (including the one in XDG_CONFIG_HOME
) are not read. The project root of an input file is taken to be the nearest ancestor directory that contains a .git or .hg or dune-project file. If no config file is found, then the formatting is disabled.
This feature is often the behavior you can expect from OCamlFormat when it is directly run from your text editor, so it is advised to use this option.
$(opam config var share)/emacs/site-lisp
to load-path
(as done by opam user-setup install
)(require 'ocamlformat)
to .emacs
.emacs
to bind C-M-<tab>
to the ocamlformat command and install a hook to run ocamlformat when saving:(add-hook 'tuareg-mode-hook (lambda ()
(define-key tuareg-mode-map (kbd "C-M-<tab>") #'ocamlformat)
(add-hook 'before-save-hook #'ocamlformat-before-save)))
To pass the option --disable-outside-detected-project
(or --disable
) to OCamlFormat:
emacs
M-x customize-group⏎
then enter ocamlformat⏎
Enable
(by default), Disable
or Disable outside detected project
C-x C-s
) then enter yes⏎
and exitOther OCamlFormat options can be set in .ocamlformat configuration files.
A basic configuration with use-package:
(use-package ocamlformat
:custom (ocamlformat-enable 'enable-outside-detected-project)
:hook (before-save . ocamlformat-before-save)
)
Sometimes you need to have a switch for OCamlFormat (because of version conflicts or because you don't want to install it in every switch, for example). Considering your OCamlFormat switch is named ocamlformat
:
(use-package ocamlformat
:load-path
(lambda ()
(concat
;; Never use "/" or "\" since this is not portable (opam-user-setup does this though)
;; Always use file-name-as-directory since this will append the correct separator if needed
;; (or use a package that does it well like https://github.com/rejeep/f.el)
;; This is the verbose and not package depending version:
(file-name-as-directory
;; Couldn't find an option to remove the newline so a substring is needed
(substring (shell-command-to-string "opam config var share --switch=ocamlformat --safe") 0 -1))
(file-name-as-directory "emacs")
(file-name-as-directory "site-lisp")))
:custom
(ocamlformat-enable 'enable-outside-detected-project)
(ocamlformat-command
(concat
(file-name-as-directory
(substring (shell-command-to-string "opam config var bin --switch=ocamlformat --safe") 0 -1))
"ocamlformat"))
:hook (before-save . ocamlformat-before-save)
)
(Notice the :custom
to customize the OCamlFormat binary)
This could be made simpler (by defining an elisp variable corresponding to the switch prefix when loading tuareg, for example) but it allows to have a full configuration in one place only which is often less error prone.
ocamlformat
binary can be found in PATHOptional: You can change the options passed to OCamlFormat (to use the option --disable-outside-detected-project
for example), you can customize NeoFormat with:
let g:neoformat_ocaml_ocamlformat = {
\ 'exe': 'ocamlformat',
\ 'no_append': 1,
\ 'stdin': 1,
\ 'args': ['--disable-outside-detected-project', '--name', '"%:p"', '-']
\ }
let g:neoformat_enabled_ocaml = ['ocamlformat']
OCamlFormat is documented in its man page and through its internal help:
ocamlformat --help
man ocamlformat
You can also view it online.
OCamlFormat is influenced by and follows the same basic design as refmt
for Reason, but outputs OCaml instead of Reason.
This tool is not able to deal directly with Reason code (*.re
/*.rei
files), but it is possible to first convert these files to OCaml syntax using refmt -p ml
and then running ocamlformat
on this output.
See CONTRIBUTING for how to help out.
OCamlFormat is MIT-licensed.