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  1. Stackups
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  3. Code Review
  4. Code Review
  5. Checkstyle vs Prettier

Checkstyle vs Prettier

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Checkstyle
Checkstyle
Stacks132
Followers107
Votes0
GitHub Stars8.7K
Forks3.9K
Prettier
Prettier
Stacks13.2K
Followers1.3K
Votes7
GitHub Stars51.1K
Forks4.6K

Checkstyle vs Prettier: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Checkstyle and Prettier

Checkstyle and Prettier are two popular tools used for code formatting and analysis. While they both aim to improve code quality, there are several key differences between them.

  1. Parsing and Language Support: Checkstyle is primarily designed for Java code analysis, while Prettier supports a wide range of programming languages like JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, and more. Prettier uses custom parsers for each language, enabling it to handle specific language syntax and formatting rules effectively.

  2. Configurability: Checkstyle offers a high level of configurability, allowing developers to customize various aspects of the code analysis process such as coding style rules, naming conventions, and suppressions. On the other hand, Prettier takes a more opinionated approach, promoting consistent code style by enforcing its set rules without much room for customization.

  3. Formatting Options: Prettier provides a comprehensive set of formatting options, covering indentation, line wrapping, trailing commas, and other code layout preferences. It automatically applies these formatting rules to the code, ensuring consistent style across projects. Checkstyle, on the other hand, offers a limited set of formatting options and focuses more on static code analysis to identify potential problems and enforce coding standards.

  4. Integration and Automation: Prettier is often used as an integrated development environment (IDE) plugin or a pre-commit hook, allowing for seamless integration into the development workflow. It automatically formats the code whenever files are saved or committed. Checkstyle, on the other hand, is commonly integrated into the build process, where it analyzes the code and generates reports that can be used for identifying issues.

  5. Code Analysis: Checkstyle provides a wide range of static code analysis checks, covering areas such as coding standards, best practices, potential bugs, and performance optimizations. It helps developers catch coding errors and maintain a consistent code style. Prettier, on the other hand, focuses primarily on code formatting and does not offer extensive code analysis capabilities.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Checkstyle has a well-established and mature community with a wide range of plugins and extensions available. It is widely used in the Java ecosystem and has extensive documentation and support. Prettier, though relatively newer, has gained significant popularity across multiple language ecosystems, with a growing community and a range of plugins and integrations available.

In summary, Checkstyle is more focused on code analysis and comprehensive configuration options, primarily for Java projects. Prettier, on the other hand, excels at code formatting across multiple languages with its opinionated approach and strong integration capabilities, but offers limited code analysis.

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Advice on Checkstyle , Prettier

Alex
Alex

Software Engineer

Aug 7, 2020

Review

you don't actually have to choose between these tools as they have vastly different purposes. i think its more a matter of understanding how to use them.

while eslint and stylelint are used to notify you about code quality issues, to guide you to write better code, prettier automatically handles code formatting (without notifying me). nothing else.

prettier and eslint both officially discourage using the eslint-plugin-prettier way, as these tools actually do very different things. autofixing with linters on watch isnt a great idea either. auto-fixing should only be done intentionally. you're not alone though, as a lot of devs set this up wrong.

i encourage you to think about what problem you're trying to solve and configure accordingly.

for my teams i set it up like this:

  • eslint, stylelint, prettier locally installed for cli use and ide support
  • eslint config prettier (code formatting rules are not eslints business, so dont warn me about it)
  • vscode workspace config: format on save
  • separate npm scripts for linting, and formatting
  • precommit hooks (husky)

so you can easily integrate with gulp. its just js after all ;)

159k views159k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Checkstyle
Checkstyle
Prettier
Prettier

It is a development tool to help programmers write Java code that adheres to a coding standard. It automates the process of checking Java code to spare humans of this boring (but important) task. This makes it ideal for projects that want to enforce a coding standard.

Prettier is an opinionated code formatter. It enforces a consistent style by parsing your code and re-printing it with its own rules that take the maximum line length into account, wrapping code when necessary.

-
An opinionated code formatter; Supports many languages; Integrates with most editors; Has few options; You press save and code is formatted; No need to discuss style in code review; Saves you time and energy
Statistics
GitHub Stars
8.7K
GitHub Stars
51.1K
GitHub Forks
3.9K
GitHub Forks
4.6K
Stacks
132
Stacks
13.2K
Followers
107
Followers
1.3K
Votes
0
Votes
7
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet
Pros
  • 2
    Customizable
  • 1
    Open Source
  • 1
    Completely free
  • 1
    Runs offline
  • 1
    Follows the Ruby Style Guide by default
Integrations
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA
Java
Java
GraphQL
GraphQL
JavaScript
JavaScript
TypeScript
TypeScript
Flow
Flow
Vue.js
Vue.js
AngularJS
AngularJS
markdown
markdown
YAML
YAML
Less
Less

What are some alternatives to Checkstyle , Prettier?

Code Climate

Code Climate

After each Git push, Code Climate analyzes your code for complexity, duplication, and common smells to determine changes in quality and surface technical debt hotspots.

Codacy

Codacy

Codacy automates code reviews and monitors code quality on every commit and pull request on more than 40 programming languages reporting back the impact of every commit or PR, issues concerning code style, best practices and security.

Phabricator

Phabricator

Phabricator is a collection of open source web applications that help software companies build better software.

PullReview

PullReview

PullReview helps Ruby and Rails developers to develop new features cleanly, on-time, and with confidence by automatically reviewing their code.

Gerrit Code Review

Gerrit Code Review

Gerrit is a self-hosted pre-commit code review tool. It serves as a Git hosting server with option to comment incoming changes. It is highly configurable and extensible with default guarding policies, webhooks, project access control and more.

SonarQube

SonarQube

SonarQube provides an overview of the overall health of your source code and even more importantly, it highlights issues found on new code. With a Quality Gate set on your project, you will simply fix the Leak and start mechanically improving.

RuboCop

RuboCop

RuboCop is a Ruby static code analyzer. Out of the box it will enforce many of the guidelines outlined in the community Ruby Style Guide.

CodeFactor.io

CodeFactor.io

CodeFactor.io automatically and continuously tracks code quality with every GitHub or BitBucket commit and pull request, helping software developers save time in code reviews and efficiently tackle technical debt.

ESLint

ESLint

A pluggable and configurable linter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. Maintain your code quality with ease.

Amazon CodeGuru

Amazon CodeGuru

It is a machine learning service for automated code reviews and application performance recommendations. It helps you find the most expensive lines of code that hurt application performance and keep you up all night troubleshooting, then gives you specific recommendations to fix or improve your code.

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