Formatting and documentation

Formatting

novac fmt rewrites Nova source in one canonical style. It has no options, so code formatted by anyone looks the same. The style is specified in Formatting.

novac fmt                       # the package's sources (or: novac fmt file.nova dir/)
novac fmt --check               # change nothing; list the files that would change; exit 1 if any
novac fmt --stdout file.nova    # print one file formatted

The style, briefly:

• 4-space indentation, no tabs, at most one blank line in a row, lines up to 120 columns;
• a block or list you wrote on one line stays on one line if it fits; one you broke across lines is laid out one element per line, with a trailing comma;
• a line that is too long is broken at the outermost place that helps: an expression body, then a list, then an initialiser, then an operator;
• } else { on one line, and the blocks of an if/else chain are broken together;
• trailing comments on consecutive lines are aligned.

It is safe by construction: the formatter only changes whitespace and trailing commas, and before returning it parses its own output and checks that the program and its comments are unchanged. A file with a syntax error is left alone.

Documentation

novac doc writes one Markdown page for a package's public items: each item's signature, as the formatter prints it, and its /// doc comment, which is Markdown.

novac doc -o api.md --title "geometry"
novac doc --missing             # list the public items without a doc comment; exit 1 if any

/// A point in the plane.
///   - coordinates are exact integers;
///   - `norm` is the squared length.
public struct Point {
    public x: i64;
    public y: i64;

    /// The squared distance from the origin.
    public fn norm(this) -> i64 => this.x * this.x + this.y * this.y;
}

becomes a section with public struct Point { public x: i64; public y: i64; }, the list, and a subsection for Point.norm. The lib/core reference on this site is generated this way.