[Maria-developers] Proposal for automatic code formatting (clang-format)
Hi. I'm proposing to add some tool that automatically formats source code. Main purpose is overall productivity. It's possible to save time on manual formatting. Also, reading a uniformly formatted code is easier. Some new languages has one correct coding style and code formatters. Examples are Go (https://golang.org/cmd/gofmt/) and (to be done) Rust (https://github.com/rust-dev-tools/fmt-rfcs/blob/master/guide/guide.md). I suggest to read 'Motivation - why use a formatting tool' from second link. There is no single correct coding style in C and C++ worlds: different projects use different styles if any at all. But there is a tool which does formatting and supports different styles: clang-format. It's a binary available for every major platform. It's configurable: just put .clang-format file with formatting options in source directory and formatter will use it for current and nested directories. I actually do not propose here to use exactly clang-format but as I know it's the best of its kind. Here is a demo https://youtu.be/uZI_Qla4pNA?t=1893 Tool is configurable but it will not act exactly as you might expect and this is a pay for uniformity. So, let's add .clang-format to root directory, start using and polishing style. Here is some info on how to add it to some text editors https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormat.html I do not(!) suggesting to reformat whole project. At least for now. Here is my PR to add .clang-format files to server and InnoDB: https://github.com/MariaDB/server/pull/1270 I think that eventually .clang-format usage will lead to reformatting everything and having some project-wide precommit hook which will properly format your diffs. Do you have any objections or questions on having such a tool? Let's discuss, please. -- Eugene
participants (1)
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Eugene Kosov