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

Hi,

brian m. carlson wrote:

quoted

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

quoted

quoted

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:

quoted

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