What is java-code-styles?

Square's java-code-styles repository provides ready-made formatting rules for Java and Android projects in IntelliJ IDEA, the popular development environment. The idea is simple: instead of every developer on a team manually configuring how their code looks, things like indentation, spacing, and brace placement, you install these settings once and everyone's editor automatically formats code the same way. This keeps codebases consistent and eliminates petty arguments about style. Using it is straightforward. You run a script (there's one for Mac/Linux and one for Windows), restart IntelliJ, and then pick the code style from your project settings. From that point on, the IDE applies those formatting rules automatically. It's essentially a configuration file packaged with a helper script to put it in the right place on your computer. This would appeal to engineering teams building Java or Android apps who want to standardize how their code looks without building a style guide from scratch. A startup spinning up its first Android app, for instance, could use these settings to get sensible defaults that match what a well-known company like Square uses. It saves time and ensures consistency across the team. However, it's worth noting that this project is deprecated and no longer maintained. The team at Square has moved on to using ktfmt for Kotlin code, and they now recommend using .editorconfig files instead, which are a more modern and broadly supported way to share formatting rules across different editors and tools. So while the settings here still work, they represent an older approach that most teams today would skip in favor of newer alternatives.