Biome, the all-in-one JavaScript toolchain, has released v2.0 Beta. Biome 2.0 Beta introduces a number of new features in this beta which bring it closer to ESLint and Prettier, such as plugins, to write custom lint rules, domains to group your lint rules by technology and improved sorting capabilities.
Biome has support for JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX JSON and GraphQL and claims to be 35x faster when compared to Prettier.
While ESLint and Prettier have long been the default choices for JavaScript and TypeScript projects, developers have had to maintain multiple configurations, plugins, and parsers to keep these tools working together. Biome’s goal is to consolidate all of that under one high-performance tool written in Rust. Although the goal is clear, Biome has still been missing features compared to ESLint and Prettier, as noted here on Reddit:
“I’ve replaced ESLint + Prettier in favor of Biome, however it does feel incomplete. YAML, GraphQL, import sorting and plugins are missing.”
Biome v2.0 aims to address these missing features. Plugins will allow users to match custom code snippets and report diagnostics on them, they are a first step in extending the linting rules for Biome users, and the team have indicated in their release blog that they have “plenty of ideas for making them more powerful”.
The plugins should be written using GritQL, which is an open-source query language created by GritIO for searching and modifying source code. Plugins can be added into a project by adding a reference to all the .grit plugin files within a project’s configuration. It is noted in the documentation that not all GritQL features are supported yet in Biome, and there is a GitHub issue that tracks the status of feature support.
Domains are a way to organise all the linting rules by technology, framework or domain, and there are currently four domains: next, react, solid and test. It is possible to control rules for the full domain in the biome config. Biome will also automatically inspect a package.json file and determine which domains should be enabled by default.
Improved Import Organizer is causing some excitement from early adopters. The improvements include the organizer now bundling together imports onto a single line when they come from the same module or file. Custom ordering configuration has also been added which provides the functionality for custom import ordering using the new import organizer. An example, or common use case of this is being able to group type imports at either the start or end of the import chunk.
Biome has a guide dedicated to developers looking to migrate from ESList and Prettier over to Biome. It includes two separate commands for automatically migrating both ESLint and Prettier. There is a note in the migration guide for Prettier that Biome does attempt to match as closely as possible, but there may be differences due to Biome’s different defaults.
Originally forked from Rome, Biome was born and built by the open-source community. Since then, the project has grown with contributions from former Rome maintainers and new community members alike. The Biome GitHub repository is now actively maintained, and the project has continued to grow.
The full documentation for Biome v2.0 Beta is available on biomejs.dev, including rule references and setup instructions for various environments.
