Engineering Craft › Developer Tooling

EditorConfig

A shared config for indentation and line endings across editors.

Also known as: .editorconfig, EditorConfig file

EditorConfig is a small file, .editorconfig, that tells different editors the basic formatting rules for a project: indentation, line endings, final newline. Anyone who opens the project gets the same settings, whatever their editor.

# .editorconfig (in the project root)
root = true

[*]
indent_style = space
indent_size = 2
end_of_line = lf
charset = utf-8
trim_trailing_whitespace = true
insert_final_newline = true

[*.py]
indent_size = 4

[Makefile]
indent_style = tab

Most editors support it, either built in or through a plugin.

Why use it

• No whitespace fights. One person using tabs and another using spaces creates noisy diffs and merge conflicts.
• Consistent line endings across Windows and Unix machines.
• Zero setup for newcomers: clone the repository and the editor behaves.
• Smaller, cleaner diffs (code style consistency).

What it doesn’t do

It covers basic whitespace and encoding. It doesn’t reformat code, enforce naming or find bugs. For that, use a formatter such as Prettier or Black, and a linter. They work together: EditorConfig sets the editor, and the formatter fixes everything on save or in CI.

Habits

• Commit it with the project.
• Keep it consistent with your formatter’s settings (indent size and line width), so they don’t fight.
• Use root = true so editors stop looking in parent folders.
• Override per file type where a language needs it (tabs in Makefiles).