formatter.lineEnding based on the operating system.

[MuhammadSawalhy]

I'm working in a team to deliver a project and chose Biome as the promising and very fast solution for formatting and linting. Thx for such a great tool. Some of the teammates are using Windows and some are using Linux and as we know windows uses crlf as the line ending and Linux (POSIX systems) uses lf.

So, configuring Biome to use one of them only won't help us and will result to changes in all files if formatter in one OS and then formatted again all files in another OS.

I don't know if there is a solution for my use case or not. Any help is appreciated!

[arendjr]

Are you using Git? I think it can be configured to enforce one type of line-ending so that people who check in from “the other OS” will still commit with the line-ending expected for the repository.

[MuhammadSawalhy]

I know that feature of git. But the problem here happens when running biome format --write . it will change all the files in the repo and will be shown in the unstaged area and when added to the staged files (using git add .) these changes to the line ending will be reset back.

I've tried this scenario and here is what happened:

The OS is Windows, and I added the configuration formatter.lineEnding: "crlf" after not setting it. The formatting command will change all the files to have crlf but when these files are added to the staged area, they will be changed back to original state which I think was lf.

$ pnpm biome format --write .
Formatted 215 files in 179ms. Fixed 215 files.

---

I'm experiencing a strange behavior. If I changed formatter.lineEnding from crlf to lf then formatted all files, all the files will be changes (git add . will not stage anything), and the second time I format all files no files are changed. The same happens when I change it from lf to crlf, the first formatting changes all files, git add . add nothing to the staged area, and the second formatting do nothing.

[MuhammadSawalhy]

Code_aGr2SleO6Y.mp4

[arendjr]

I think the solution here is to configure your IDE to use the line ending that the repository expects. Even though you’re on Windows, you can still use a different line ending.

The confusing git add . behavior you witness is due to the files having no real changes after the line endings are normalized.

[arendjr]

Did this answer your question? Happy to close the discussion if it's resolved.