# rustfmt [](https://travis-ci.com/rust-lang/rustfmt) [](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/rust-lang-libs/rustfmt) [](https://crates.io/crates/rustfmt-nightly) [](https://travis-ci.org/davidalber/rustfmt-travis)
A tool for formatting Rust code according to style guidelines.
If you'd like to help out (and you should, it's a fun project!), see
[Contributing.md](Contributing.md) and our [Code of
Conduct](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).
You can use rustfmt in Travis CI builds. We provide a minimal Travis CI
configuration (see [here](#checking-style-on-a-ci-server)) and verify its status
using another repository. The status of that repository's build is reported by
the "travis example" badge above.
## Quick start
You can run `rustfmt` with Rust 1.24 and above.
### On the Stable toolchain
To install:
```sh
rustup component add rustfmt
```
To run on a cargo project in the current working directory:
```sh
cargo fmt
```
### On the Nightly toolchain
For the latest and greatest `rustfmt`, nightly is required.
To install:
```sh
rustup component add rustfmt --toolchain nightly
```
To run on a cargo project in the current working directory:
```sh
cargo +nightly fmt
```
## Limitations
Rustfmt tries to work on as much Rust code as possible, sometimes, the code
doesn't even need to compile! As we approach a 1.0 release we are also looking
to limit areas of instability; in particular, post-1.0, the formatting of most
code should not change as Rustfmt improves. However, there are some things that
Rustfmt can't do or can't do well (and thus where formatting might change
significantly, even post-1.0). We would like to reduce the list of limitations
over time.
The following list enumerates areas where Rustfmt does not work or where the
stability guarantees do not apply (we don't make a distinction between the two
because in the future Rustfmt might work on code where it currently does not):
* a program where any part of the program does not parse (parsing is an early
stage of compilation and in Rust includes macro expansion).
* Macro declarations and uses (current status: some macro declarations and uses
are formatted).
* Comments, including any AST node with a comment 'inside' (Rustfmt does not
currently attempt to format comments, it does format code with comments inside, but that formatting may change in the future).
* Rust code in code blocks in comments.
* Any fragment of a program (i.e., stability guarantees only apply to whole
programs, even where fragments of a program can be formatted today).
* Code containing non-ascii unicode characters (we believe Rustfmt mostly works
here, but do not have the test coverage or experience to be 100% sure).
* Bugs in Rustfmt (like any software, Rustfmt has bugs, we do not consider bug
fixes to break our stability guarantees).
## Installation
```sh
rustup component add rustfmt
```
## Installing from source
To install from source (nightly required), first checkout to the tag or branch you want to install, then issue
```sh
cargo install --path .
```
This will install `rustfmt` in your `~/.cargo/bin`. Make sure to add `~/.cargo/bin` directory to
your PATH variable.
## Running
You can run Rustfmt by just typing `rustfmt filename` if you used `cargo
install`. This runs rustfmt on the given file, if the file includes out of line
modules, then we reformat those too. So to run on a whole module or crate, you
just need to run on the root file (usually mod.rs or lib.rs). Rustfmt can also
read data from stdin. Alternatively, you can use `cargo fmt` to format all
binary and library targets of your crate.
You can run `rustfmt --help` for information about available arguments.
When running with `--check`, Rustfmt will exit with `0` if Rustfmt would not
make any formatting changes to the input, and `1` if Rustfmt would make changes.
In other modes, Rustfmt will exit with `1` if there was some error during
formatting (for example a parsing or internal error) and `0` if formatting
completed without error (whether or not changes were made).
## Running Rustfmt from your editor
* [Vim](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust.vim#formatting-with-rustfmt)
* [Emacs](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-mode)
* [Sublime Text 3](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/RustFmt)
* [Atom](atom.md)
* Visual Studio Code using [vscode-rust](https://github.com/editor-rs/vscode-rust), [vsc-rustfmt](https://github.com/Connorcpu/vsc-rustfmt) or [rls_vscode](https://github.com/jonathandturner/rls_vscode) through RLS.
* [IntelliJ or CLion](intellij.md)
## Checking style on a CI server
To keep your code base consistently formatted, it can be helpful to fail the CI build
when a pull request contains unformatted code. Using `--check` instructs
rustfmt to exit with an error code if the input is not formatted correctly.
It will also print any found differences. (Older versions of Rustfmt don't
support `--check`, use `--write-mode diff`).
A minimal Travis setup could look like this (requires Rust 1.24.0 or greater):
```yaml
language: rust
before_script:
- rustup component add rustfmt
script:
- cargo fmt --all -- --check
- cargo build
- cargo test
```
See [this blog post](https://medium.com/@ag_dubs/enforcing-style-in-ci-for-rust-projects-18f6b09ec69d)
for more info.
## How to build and test
`cargo build` to build.
`cargo test` to run all tests.
To run rustfmt after this, use `cargo run --bin rustfmt -- filename`. See the
notes above on running rustfmt.
## Configuring Rustfmt
Rustfmt is designed to be very configurable. You can create a TOML file called
`rustfmt.toml` or `.rustfmt.toml`, place it in the project or any other parent
directory and it will apply the options in that file. See `rustfmt
--help=config` for the options which are available, or if you prefer to see
visual style previews, [GitHub page](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustfmt/).
By default, Rustfmt uses a style which conforms to the [Rust style guide][style
guide] that has been formalized through the [style RFC
process][fmt rfcs].
Configuration options are either stable or unstable. Stable options can always
be used, while unstable ones are only available on a nightly toolchain, and opt-in.
See [GitHub page](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustfmt/) for details.
### Rust's Editions
Rustfmt is able to pick up the edition used by reading the `Cargo.toml` file if
executed through the Cargo's formatting tool `cargo fmt`. Otherwise, the edition
needs to be specified in `rustfmt.toml`, e.g., with `edition = "2018"`.
## Tips
* For things you do not want rustfmt to mangle, use `#[rustfmt::skip]`
* To prevent rustfmt from formatting a macro,
use `#[rustfmt::skip::macros(target_macro_name)]`
Example:
```rust
#[rustfmt::skip::macros(html)]
fn main() {
let macro_result1 = html! { <div>
Hello</div>
}.to_string();
```
* When you run rustfmt, place a file named `rustfmt.toml` or `.rustfmt.toml` in
target file directory or its parents to override the default settings of
rustfmt. You can generate a file containing the default configuration with
`rustfmt --print-config default rustfmt.toml` and customize as needed.
* After successful compilation, a `rustfmt` executable can be found in the
target directory.
* If you're having issues compiling Rustfmt (or compile errors when trying to
install), make sure you have the most recent version of Rust installed.
* You can change the way rustfmt emits the changes with the --emit flag:
Example:
```sh
cargo fmt -- --emit files
```
Options:
| Flag |Description| Nightly Only |
|:---:|:---:|:---:|
| files | overwrites output to files | No |
| stdout | writes output to stdout | No |
| coverage | displays how much of the input file was processed | Yes |
| checkstyle | emits in a checkstyle format | Yes |
## License
Rustfmt is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the
Apache License (Version 2.0).
See [LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) and [LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) for details.
[rust]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust
[fmt rfcs]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/fmt-rfcs
[style guide]: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/fmt-rfcs/blob/master/guide/guide.md