2025-09-05 –, Aula
The history of how the official Nix formatter was successfully established, along with its struggles and lessons.
We go over:
- How Nix didn't have a formatter for its first 15 years before the first ones were written
- How an RFC to standardise the formatter took 3 years, 50 meetings and 600 comments to get accepted
- How one of the most active codebases with 40k Nix files and 15k monthly commits got fully reformatted
- What problems still exist and what the future of Nix formatting holds
Joined the Nix community in 2017 and has gotten increasingly more involved ever since. Joined the Nix Group at Tweag in 2021. Ran the weekly Nix Hour from 2022 to 2024. Was part of the NCA to establish a Nix governance constitution and subsequently run the first Steering Committee election. A NixOS Foundation board member since 2025. One of the main organisers of this years NixCon.