You can format files with zprint using babashka. This has several benefits:

• You don't have to download and install anything (other than babashka)
• It runs faster (typically much faster) than the uberjar. Even on very long files, it runs about 20% faster than the uberjar.
• The user interface is identical to the uberjar or the pre-compiled binaries
• Parallel operation is automatically enabled

There are several approaches to using babashka to run zprint:

• Add zprint as a task in bb.edn
• Use bbin to install install the latest zprint

The differences are minor but worth knowing:

• When installing zprint as a task in bb.edn, you must specify the version of zprint you want. Upgrading is easy, just specify a newer version.

• The bbin approach will install the latest version of zprint. Latest as of when you executed bbin. The bbin approach adds a small increment to the startup time, on the order of perhaps 0.1s. Not a lot, and you might not notice it.

Add zprint as a task to bb.edn

0. Make sure your babashka is sufficiently current

zprint requires at least babashka 1.3.183 to execute properly. See how to get babashka.

1. Make zprint a task for babashka

Add the following map to your bb.edn file. You will want to adjust the :mvn/version to be whatever version of zprint is current. This is the current version:

{:tasks {zprint {:extra-deps {zprint/zprint {:mvn/version "1.3.0"}},
                 :requires ([zprint.main]),
                 :task (apply zprint.main/-main *command-line-args*)}}}

2. Invoke zprint using babashka

You can now invoke the zprint task using babashka like this (assuming bb invokes babashka):

bb zprint --help

All of the normal switches for the zprint uberjar or zprint pre-compiled binaries work except for --url, -u, and --url-only. Which you probably weren't interested in anyway.

Install zprint using bbin

-1. Make sure your babashka is sufficiently current

zprint requires at least babashka 1.3.183 to execute properly. See how to get babashka.

0. Get bbin

You must have installed bbin.

1. Install zprint

You just execute:

bbin install io.github.kkinnear/zprint

The default name for what is installed is zprint. Using a different name is easy:

bbin install io.github.kkinnear/zprint --as zprint-myname

where zprint-myname is whatever name you want.

2. Try zprint

The normal switches are supported:

zprint --help