have zig fmt notice a special comment that tells it to skip a source file

[andrewrk]

Currently zig has 3 files that we want to always skip formatting:

• std/special/compiler_rt/udivmodti4_test.zig
  • it's 1.8MiB so we want to only update the syntax when necessary
• std/special/compiler_rt/udivmoddi4_test.zig
  • it's 9.8MiB so we want to only update the syntax when necessary
• test/cases/syntax.zig
  • it's testing parsing edge cases, so running zig fmt would defeat the purpose of the tests

Here's my idea:

// zig fmt: skip

... normal code ...

If the first token in the file is a line comment that has the contents zig fmt: skip then zig fmt skips the file.

[ghost]

// clang-format off
Some code
// clang-format on

Works well for cpp, maybe this would be a good fit for zig fmt as well.

Just
// zig-format off
Would disable it for the whole file

Only downside I can think of is that people use it more frequently and code does not get formatted uniquely everywhere.

[bronze1man]

What about the git merge conflicts problem?
it should be very serious to the 9.8MiB file.

go fmt in the golang can create a lot of git merge conflicts.
So I do not use it any more.

Our team have an rule about format code with ide or tool:

• Only format the code your just writen.
• Do not format the old code.
• Do not format all the code in the project.

[ghost]

What about the git merge conflicts problem?

https://git-scm.com/docs/merge-strategies

and #1037 (comment)

Do not format the old code.

formatting is idempotent, applying formatting to old code over and over does thus not change anything

Do not format all the code in the project.

for special cases there will be #1030 (comment) zig-fmt off

[bronze1man]

It is strange that go fmt actually increase the number of git conflicts in the long term in my experience.

If you add a long field into a golang struct in one place, and go fmt it. All the line of that struct changed. So it will conflicts when another guy add a field into this struct in another place.
If you do not use the go fmt in that case. The code looks ugly, but it only add 1 line.Other line of struct do not change. So it will not conflicts in above example.

May be there is a design bug in go fmt. Or I should not add two different fields into a struct in two git branch and merge them.

I know that the design bug in go fmt can not be fixed because it will break lots of the exist code.
It maybe avoid in the zig fmt, so we can use it before build.

[andrewrk]

It is strange that go fmt actually increase the number of git conflicts in the long term in my experience.

One reason for this is that go fmt aligns everything. Meanwhile zig fmt does not align everything, so it is more diff friendly.