Formatter (stylua) doesn't find configuration file outside the folder the file is in

[mantzu132]

Ran into this issue where stylua couldn't find stylua.toml in a parent directory of the file being formatted and used the default config instead.

My cwd was the project root where the stylua.toml file lived. I even put it in my workspace root. Same result.

My languages.toml :

[[language]]
name = "lua"
formatter = { command = "stylua", args = ["-"] }
auto-format = true

From stylua docs:

The CLI looks for a stylua.toml or .stylua.toml starting from the directory of the file being formatted. It will keep searching upwards until it reaches the current directory where the tool was executed. If not found, we search for an .editorconfig file, otherwise fall back to the default configuration

Question : Does helix run the formatter in the directory where the file is located and not from my cwd / workspace root?

By default, StyLua does not search further than the current directory. Use --search-parent-directories to recursively search parent directories.

When I added this my problem got solved. However it says :

Note: enabling searching outside of the current directory is NOT recommended due to possibilities of conflicting formatting:

It is recommended to keep a .stylua.toml file in your project root so that other developers can make use of the same configuration.

A bit strange since in neovim everything used to work like you would expect it to. I didn't have to pass any other stuff to stylua. I did try passing filepath to stylua but it made no difference i'm not sure whether it even does anything as they say it's optional:

[[language]]
name = "lua"
formatter = { command = "stylua", args = ["--stdin-filepath", "%{buffer_name}","-"] }
auto-format = true

[apoorva-01]

Yeah, helix runs the formatter with its working directory set to the file's own folder, not your cwd or workspace root. That's the whole reason --search-parent-directories fixes it, so it's not really a hack.

It's right there in format() in helix-view/src/document.rs: it calls process.current_dir(doc_dir) where doc_dir is the parent of the file being formatted. stylua then starts its config search from that folder, and by default it won't climb any higher, so it never reaches the stylua.toml at your project root unless the file happens to sit directly in it.

neovim felt different because there the formatter usually runs from the project root, so the search starts right where your config already lives. Keeping --search-parent-directories is fine. The docs only warn about it because with several stylua.toml files scattered up the tree you could match a surprising one, but a single config at your root is exactly the safe case.

[mantzu132]

Thanks for confirming. I wonder if this behavior should at least be mentioned in the documentation to avoid confusion?