Setting up the tool-chain

In order to ensure a consistent development environment across machines, we use Nix. You can opt out of using Nix, in which case you can skip straight to setting up the formatter for your editor. Note that you will not receive support if Max is not building correctly for you.

Installing and configuring Nix

You can find the Nix installation instructions here: https://nixos.org/download/.

Once Nix is installed, you need to configure it to enable flakes. You can do so by running the following command:

echo "experimental-features = nix-command flakes" > ~/.config/nix/nix.conf

Installing and configuring direnv

In order to automatically load the development environment once you open the Max directory, you can install direnv on your system.

Follow the installation instructions at https://direnv.net/#getting-started.

Direnv doesn't load flakes by default, but you can enable it with an extension. To install the extension, follow these steps:

• If it doesn't exist, create a configuration directory for direnv:

  mkdir ~/.config/direnv
  

• Change directory into the direnv configuration directory:

  cd ~/.config/direnv
  

• Clone the extension's repository:

  git clone https://github.com/nix-community/nix-direnv
  

• Add the following line to the direnvrc file:

  source $HOME/.config/direnv/nix-direnv/direnvrc
  

  If it the direnvrc file doesn't exist, you can create it.

Trusting Max

Direnv doesn't load development environments unless you've told it you trust them before. cd into the directory where you cloned Max and you'll see a message on your terminal. You can run direnv allow to trust the repository.

Set up the formatter for your editor

Max strictly adheres to the style guide, so using a formatter is mandatory. The development environment provided by the Nix flake already includes the formatter, but you still have to integrate it with your text editor.

Neovim

Assuming you already have the nvim-lspconfig and ccls or clangd plugins installed and configured as well as your leader key set up, you just need to define the shortcut:

vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>f', function()
    vim.lsp.buf.format { async = true }
end, opts)

Zed

The zed editor integrates the formatter out of the box, the shortcut to activate it can be found on it's docs.

Visual Studio Code

There exists a Visual Studio Code extension that integrates the formatter provided by the Nix flake into the editor.

Other editors

If you use any other text editors let us know! We'll include the instructions here.