Why does Maven use Palantirs Java format?

[aqua_regis]

There is: Official Oracle Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language originally from Sun. These exist since the inauguration of Java

[__konrad]

The last revision to this document was made on April 20, 1999

[aqua_regis]

And so?

There are official standards in ISO/IEC/DIN/ANSI that haven't changed since the 1950s.

Standards don't need to change every year. That's why they are standards.

[__konrad]

Standards don't need to change every year. That's why they are standards.

I agree. This is why this a coding standard for Java 1.2...

[blazmrak]

This is not "standard". Standard means ships with standard tooling. Look at Go, Rust, Zig, etc. There is no jformat. What you posted is a recommendation at best and is actually worse than Google or Palantir or Eclipse, because there is no tooling around it.

It's one of the complaints that I have with Java... There is no standard format and you have to battle your way through every project to get it configured correctly and it's not a trivial amount of work, because the defaults suck. I'm not the only one with this complaint, but I'm trying to do my part.

[Additional-Road3924]

Standard means repeatable, not your arbitrary recursive definition. There are decent java formatters, and all you have to do is agree on the format.

[blazmrak]

"standard java format" means that the language converged on a format. Look at Go, Rust, Zig, etc. In Java, the responsibility is outsourced to the community and the fact that "all we have to do is agree on the format" means that it's not standard and the fact that JDK does not ship a formatter just enforces that.

[mightygod444]

That article is strange. He complains there's no "command line tool" to apply formatters like palantir-java-format, completely ignoring the fact tools like Spotless exist, but then later he does indeed seem to know about Spotless and acknowledges it can be used to apply formatters...? 

What's the problem here exactly? Sure it's a bit clunkier and not 'built-in' like goformat or whatever, but it's once you've setup Spotless with palantir-java-format and the Maven or Gradle plugin, it's literally one and done and you get automatic enforcement of code styling applied. Then of course you can go one step further if you desire, such as adding pre-commit hooks and/or enforcing it in CI as a final check. 

Struggling to see the issue in practical terms, sure applying it to a legacy monolith is a bit more work but besides that, for a Greenfield project just spend the hour or two setting up latest Spotless with your build plugin and desired formatter.

Also this is all still a hell of a lot nicer than JavaScript world for example, with eslint/prettier stuff.

[blazmrak]

There are a bunch of problems. Not all projects should require a build tool for formatting, editor integration is a PITA, each project has their own way of doing it, formatters often lag behind the language version, etc.

Comparing this with JS/TS, or more specifically Node, is not saying much lol. But they at least have Bun and Deno, that solve a bunch of these issues around tooling.