quiet by default?

[robx]

I just tried out the new nix fmt with alejandra after upgrading to nixos 22.05, by setting

formatter.${system} = pkgs.alejandra;

It's almost great, except the excessive colored console output makes me have second thoughts. What do you think of setting it up such that it runs with -q by default? Essentially, I'd like nix fmt to have no output at all if my files are in order.

[winterqt]

@kamadorueda Do you mind if I PR a change prototyping what I think this should look like, to further discussion? (I ask since you haven't replied to this.) Ah, the existing quiet mode already implements all the UI changes I had in mind.

[winterqt]

@robx You can always use makeWrapper to wrap the binary so nix fmt runs Alejandra in quiet mode.

[kamadorueda]

In short, something like:

{
      formatter.${system} = nixpkgs.writeShellScriptBin "alejandra" ''
        exec ${nixpkgs.alejandra}/bin/alejandra --quiet "$@"
      '';
}

We would need a survey in order to know what mode (tui vs cli vs quiet) is preferred and make it the default

I personally chose to use tui as default because the progress bar helps a lot when formatting large codebases, but I understand why the quiet philosophy is valuable to some people, too

[jessestricker]

I use alejandra for all my Nix projects, it's really great!

Like @robx, this is my only issue with the application, so I think having a survey on the default behaviour would be nice.

Personally, I prefer the quiet mode:

• it does not clear the screen (this is the biggest issue)
• it makes alejandra more in-line with other formatters (and CLI tools in general)
• a progress bar is not that useful in small projects anyways (how often do you run alejandra on the whole of nixpkgs?)

[kamadorueda]

I just created some poll over here: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-uncompromising-nix-code-formatter/17385/48?u=kamadorueda

And it seems this is actually a good idea, not to mention other people also support this point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
So I'll be drafting a change once I get some spare time, thanks for the feedback!

[kamadorueda]

Some updates to the CLI just landed master, it would be good if you help me review them before creating a release, with them, this issue could be closed

@robx @jessestricker @winterqt

[robx]

I see this now, without a --quiet wrapper shell script:

$ nix fmt
Checking style in 6 files using 2 threads.


Congratulations! Your code complies the Alejandra style.

If Alejandra is useful to you, please sponsor its author.
Thank you! https://github.com/sponsors/kamadorueda

[jessestricker]

👍🏾 I think the new default is an improvement.

I would have preferred it to be like this though:

• default mode: no success output, just errors (like --quiet)
• --verbose: list of formatted files, success output, also errors (like new default)
• --verbose --verbose: the TUI mode (like old default)

If you agree, I'd be willing to do a PR for this.

[SignalWalker]

I've been using this to format neovim buffers with :%!alejandra -q; this used to work perfectly, but, in this version, the donation/star ads are sometimes appended to the end of output, which breaks things -- i.e. :%!alejandra -q is no longer idempotent, because it will sometimes append an ad to an otherwise unchanged input.

[winterqt]

I don't see why it would be only sometimes, but this looks to be the culprit, it's right outside of the quiet check:

alejandra/src/alejandra_cli/src/cli.rs

Lines 198 to 201 in ac74bc5

	if in_place {
	println!();
	print!("{}", random_ad());
	}

[kamadorueda]

Thanks! let me fix it

[winterqt]

Also, @kamadorueda: is there a reason that the ads here are printed to stdout, when otherwise the status messages are printed to stderr? Seems like it could also break things.

alejandra/src/alejandra_cli/src/cli.rs

Lines 206 to 211 in ac74bc5

	if !args.quiet {
	eprintln!();
	eprintln!("Congratulations! Your code complies the Alejandra style.");
	println!();
	print!("{}", random_ad());
	}

[kamadorueda]

No, I must have been distracted when I implemented that, fix is here: #340

[kamadorueda]

@SignalWalker I just fixed that:

[kamadorueda@machine:/data/alejandra]$ echo {} | cargo -q run -- -q
{}

[kamadorueda@machine:/data/alejandra]$ echo $?
0

[kamadorueda@machine:/data/alejandra]$ echo {}} | cargo -q run -- -q
{}}

Failed! 1 error found at:
- <anonymous file on stdin>: unexpected token at 2..3

[kamadorueda@machine:/data/alejandra]$ echo $?
1

Do you think printing the error when formatting stdin is useful? I just tried it in Vim and the error message is injected into the buffer, which then requires an 'undo' to revert the change

Would one of the following be helpful for Vim users?

• Do not print the error messages when receiving input from stdin?
• Make -qq also suppress error messages

[SignalWalker]

-qq would be useful, yeah. Thanks for the fix!

[kamadorueda]

I just released 3.0.0

While this issue was not exactly implemented as initially proposed, the new CLI output contains the elements the community cares about the most and the identified pain points were fixed

[pacak]

FWIW configuring according to https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-fmt.html (included below) makes it not quiet.

# flake.nix
{
  outputs = { nixpkgs, self }: {
    formatter.x86_64-linux = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.alejandra;
  };
}