Guidelines

If your contribution tightly follows the guidelines, then there is a good chance it will be merged without too much trouble. Some of the guidelines will be strictly enforced, others will remain as gentle nudges towards the correct direction. As we have no automated system enforcing those guidelines, please try to double check your changes before making your pull request in order to avoid "faulty" code slipping by.

If you are uncertain how these rules affect the change you would like to make then feel free to start a discussion in the discussions tab ideally (but not necessarily) before you start developing.

Adding Documentation

Most, if not all, changes warrant changes to the documentation. Module options should be documented with Nixpkgs-flavoured Markdown, albeit with exceptions.

::: {.note} As of v0.5, nvf is itself documented using full markdown in both module options and the manual. With v0.6, this manual has also been converted to markdown in full. :::

The HTML version of this manual containing both the module option descriptions and the documentation of nvf (such as this page) can be generated and opened by typing the following in a shell within a clone of the nvf Git repository:

$ nix build .#docs-html
$ xdg-open $PWD/result/share/doc/nvf/index.html

Formatting Code

Make sure your code is formatted as described in code-style section. To maintain consistency throughout the project you are encouraged to browse through existing code and adopt its style also in new code.

Formatting Commits

Similar to code style guidelines we encourage a consistent commit message format as described in commit style guidelines.

Commit Style

The commits in your pull request should be reasonably self-contained. Which means each and every commit in a pull request should make sense both on its own and in general context. That is, a second commit should not resolve an issue that is introduced in an earlier commit. In particular, you will be asked to amend any commit that introduces syntax errors or similar problems even if they are fixed in a later commit.

The commit messages should follow the seven rules, except for "Capitalize the subject line". We also ask you to include the affected code component or module in the first line. A commit message ideally, but not necessarily, follow the given template from home-manager's own documentation

  {component}: {description}

  {long description}

where {component} refers to the code component (or module) your change affects, {description} is a very brief description of your change, and {long description} is an optional clarifying description. As a rare exception, if there is no clear component, or your change affects many components, then the {component} part is optional. See example commit message for a commit message that fulfills these requirements.

Example Commit

The commit 69f8e47e9e74c8d3d060ca22e18246b7f7d988ef in home-manager contains the following commit message.

starship: allow running in Emacs if vterm is used

The vterm buffer is backed by libvterm and can handle Starship prompts
without issues.

Similarly, if you are contributing to nvf, you would include the scope of the commit followed by the description:

languages/ruby: init module

Adds a language module for Ruby, adds appropriate formatters and Treesitter grammers

Long description can be ommitted if the change is too simple to warrant it. A minor fix in spelling or a formatting change does not warrant long description, however, a module addition or removal does as you would like to provide the relevant context, i.e. the reasoning behind it, for your commit.

Finally, when adding a new module, say modules/foo.nix, we use the fixed commit format foo: add module. You can, of course, still include a long description if you wish.

In case of nested modules, i.e modules/languages/java.nix you are recommended to contain the parent as well - for example languages/java: some major change.

Code Style

Treewide

Keep lines at a reasonable width, ideally 80 characters or less. This also applies to string literals and module descriptions and documentation.

Nix

nvf is formatted by the alejandra tool and the formatting is checked in the pull request and push workflows. Run the nix fmt command inside the project repository before submitting your pull request.

While Alejandra is mostly opinionated on how code looks after formatting, certain changes are done at the user's discretion based on how the original code was structured.

Please use one line code for attribute sets that contain only one subset. For example:

# parent modules should always be unfolded
# which means module = { value = ... } instead of module.value = { ... }
module = {
  value = mkEnableOption "some description" // { default = true; }; # merges can be done inline where possible

    # same as parent modules, unfold submodules
    subModule = {
        # this is an option that contains more than one nested value
        someOtherValue = mkOption {
            type = lib.types.bool;
            description = "Some other description";
            default = true;
        };
    };
}

If you move a line down after the merge operator, Alejandra will automatically unfold the whole merged attrset for you, which we do not want.

module = {
  key = mkEnableOption "some description" // {
    default = true; # we want this to be inline
  }; # ...
}

For lists, it is mostly up to your own discretion how you want to format them, but please try to unfold lists if they contain multiple items and especially if they are to include comments.

# this is ok
acceptableList = [
  item1 # comment
  item2
  item3 # some other comment
  item4
];

# this is not ok
listToBeAvoided = [item1 item2 /* comment */ item3 item4];

# this is ok
acceptableList = [item1 item2];

# this is also ok if the list is expected to contain more elements
acceptableList= [
  item1
  item2
  # more items if needed...
];

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