Introduction to Styler, an Elixir style auto-correction tool

Greg Mefford and Matt Enlow, senior staff engineers at Adobe, introduced their open-source project called Styler at GigCityElixir 2023. Styler is an Elixir style-guide enforcer designed to correct style violations automatically by rewriting the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) using a data structure called the zipper. This tool aims to prevent the type of CI (Continuous Integration) interruptions that commonly arise from adherence to style guides like Credo, allowing Elixir developers to maintain a consistent codebase without the need for manual corrections. By utilizing the built-in formatter plug-in capabilities of Elixir, Styler can easily be integrated into developers' workflows, making it an invisible yet fast tool. The speakers highlighted the time and energy saved by offloading mundane tasks such as sorting aliases, adjusting piped expressions, and ensuring consistent code formatting to Styler. They also provided code snippets and examples to demonstrate Styler's capabilities, imploring the audience to give it a try on their codebases.