Black vs dprint

Black is a free, MIT-licensed formatter for Python code that follows PEP 8. It reformats whole files in place and uses a default line length of 88 characters. Its limited style choices are intended to keep code consistent across projects; indentation style cannot be configured. After formatting, Black checks whether the abstract syntax tree remains effectively equivalent and raises an error if the check fails. Install it with pip; it requires Python 3.10 or newer. The documentation lists editor integrations including Emacs, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, Vim, Neovim, Visual Studio Code and Sublime Text, as well as GitHub Actions and doctest workflows. Notebook formatting is available with the jupyter extra, though Black skips cells containing certain magics or invalid syntax. It also includes blackd, an HTTP server that binds to localhost by default. Black is primarily a command-line tool and does not provide a Python interface. Stable releases preserve formatting within the same calendar year when the options match.

dprint is a command-line application that automatically formats code through a configurable, pluggable system built with Rust and WebAssembly. Its official and wrapper plugins cover languages and formats including TypeScript, JavaScript, JSON, Markdown, TOML, CSS, Dockerfile, C#, Python, Go, Swift, GraphQL, YAML, PHP, LaTeX, R, and Julia. Project configuration files define plugins, formatting settings, included files, and exclusions. Plugins can be loaded from a URL or file path and pinned or versioned in configuration. The project says dprint formats hundreds of files in milliseconds and enables incremental caching by default. WebAssembly plugins run in a sandbox without network or file-system access, while process plugins are executable files and are not sandboxed. Editor integrations are listed for Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ, and Neovim; the language-server command can also be used by other editors. The CLI is distributed as a static binary with no runtime dependencies, with installation options including shell, PowerShell, Cargo, npm, and Homebrew. It is MIT-licensed and free.