[rstacruz]

Typically those are done using configuration files of code-checking tools, such as .jshintrc[1] or .pylintrc.

[1]: https://gist.github.com/connor/1597131

[canadev]

I guess I just figure these two are sort of overlapping. If you use .jshintrc why do you need this tool?

(The neat idea being: if a project has many languages, you can share code conventions for all of them in one place.)

[michaelmior]

The nice thing about EditorConfig is that it fixes some problems before they occur instead of requiring you to manually fix things after running a linter (e.g. spaces vs tabs)