Skip to content

Editor setup

For formatting HCLv2 files (that Nomad job spec uses), you can use the following setup to neatly format them automatically.

VSCode

  • Install this extension.
  • Add the following lines to your settings.json:

    "files.associations": {
        "*.nomad": "hcl",
        "*.nomad.tpl": "hcl",
        "*.tf": "terraform",
    }
- Reload VSCode.

Manual

  • Install hclfmt using go (they don't provide pre-compiled binaries, so building from source is only option):
go install github.com/hashicorp/hcl/v2/cmd/hclfmt@latest
  • Format with hclfmt. Since it only works on a single file by default, we need to use a wrapper script to cover all files and nested directories.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
for file in *; do
  hclfmt -w $file
done

  • Save the above as run-hclfmt in /usr/local/bin and chmod +x /usr/local/bin/run-hclfmt

  • Now, you'll be able to run this script from anywhere in your directory of Nomad job specs using run-hclfmt. It includes sub directories as well.