Re: [RFC] clang-format: outline the git project's coding style

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 15, 2017, 01:03 UTC
Message-ID: <20170815010354.GB78174@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170815004036.m5ejio6gdyvu6e6a@genre.crustytoothpaste.net>

Hi,

brian m. carlson wrote:

>> On Wed, Aug 09, 2017 at 03:53:17PM -0700, Stefan Beller wrote:

>>> We may have different opinions on what is readable/beautiful code.
>>> If we were to follow a mutual agreed style that is produced by a tool,
>>> we could use clean/smudge filters with different settings each.

I think this is a long way away --- long enough away that by the time such a change could be a serious possibility, a lot may have changed and the project is likely to know a lot more. In other words, I don't see speculating about that future as being likely to produce useful results today.

It would be a different story if we were writing a new codebase from scratch. In that case, I would be all for the gofmt approach. :)

> On Wed, Aug 09, 2017 at 07:19:00PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

>> I'm less worried about a difference of opinion between humans. My
>> concern is that there are cases that the tool's formatting makes _worse_
>> than what any human would write. And either we accept ugly code because
>> the tool sucks, or we spend a bunch of time fighting with the tool to
>> try to make its output look good.
>
> This has been my issue with clang-format in the past.  I have an SHA-256
> implementation with an array of 64 32-bit hex integers.  These fit six
> to a line, but for neatness and consistency reasons, I'd like them four
> to a line (4 divides 64, but 6 does not).  Last I checked, clang-format
> didn't allow me that option: it reordered them because it could fit six
> on a line.  This is not the only issue I discovered, just the most
> memorable.

In case it comes up again for you in a project that has adopted the gofmt approach: you can signify that your line breaks are intentional by putting line comments at the end of each line and clang-format will respect them.

The clang-format documentation also mentions[1] that you can do

  /* clang-format off */
  const double kIdentityMatrix[] = {
    1, 0, 0,
    0, 1, 0,
    0, 0, 1,
  };
  /* clang-format on */

Thanks, Jonathan

[1] http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html#disabling-formatting-on-a-piece-of-code