[Development] clang-format

[Tor Arne Vestbø]

On 20 Jun 2018, at 12:13, Lars Knoll <lars.knoll at qt.io> wrote:
> 
> I can’t see how clang-format will make you jump through any sort of hoops. Creator already has a hook for doing it on file saving time afaik, git-clang-format will clean up your change from the command line.

Good point, I was imagining it used only to verify style, not to auto-format. Still, starting out with a few non-controversial rules would be a good thing.

Tor Arne 


> 
> Lars
> 
>> On 20 Jun 2018, at 11:52, Tor Arne Vestbø <Tor.arne.Vestbo at qt.io> wrote:
>> 
>> How about we also start with only one or two  obvious rules that everyone agrees on? I don’t want Qt development to turn into Python PEP8 type rigid rules that makes you jump through a million hoops. If the latter is the goal here then I’m against enforcing clang-format, and it should be implemented as a bot that just warns, similar to the current style bot.
>> 
>> - Tor Arne
>> 
>>> On 20 Jun 2018, at 11:21, André Pönitz <apoenitz at t-online.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 06:30:26AM +0000, Lars Knoll wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On 19 Jun 2018, at 18:19, Ville Voutilainen
>>>>> <ville.voutilainen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 19 June 2018 at 19:13, Philippe <philwave at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> For the above reasons I'd lean towards not running it globally and
>>>>>>> just using it on new changes.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> +1, based on my clang-format experience on a big application.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> BTW, keep in mind that you can disable clang-format on code
>>>>>> sections with:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> // clang-format off // clang-format on
>>>>> 
>>>>> When I last experienced a large-scale clang-format reformat, it
>>>>> really hurt development during the churn. We should somehow manage
>>>>> to do it during a time when there aren't many pending patches in the
>>>>> pipeline. I'm not concerned about git-blame; that has never been a
>>>>> problem after reformats. However, I do not care about indentation
>>>>> nor do I want to spend time on it either way, it has no actual
>>>>> effect on readability and maintainability of code, and consistency
>>>>> outside the file you're in has never mattered to me one bit.
>>>>> 
>>>>> IOW, I'm not opposed to reformats and auto-checking of clang-format
>>>>> (or even hooking it), but I do not see it as a thing with all that
>>>>> great return-of-investment.
>>>> 
>>>> It helps in that you do not need to point those things out in code
>>>> reviews, and that I (and others) won’t even create changes with wrong
>>>> formatting that I’ll need to fix up later on. It’s part of a larger
>>>> story, where I would like to get as much automatic checking of changes
>>>> done before humans start reviewing.
>>> 
>>> It's also a cultural thing.
>>> 
>>> Quite a few people seem to take less offense from a "Your formatting is
>>> bad" when the comment comes from a bot than when it comes from a human. 
>>> 
>>>> One idea could be to introduce this incrementally. Let’s first start
>>>> off with enforcing it for new changes. Then we run it globally over
>>>> the code base shortly before Qt 6.0 is being released. At that time
>>>> merges shouldn’t be as much of a problem (as we’ll probably
>>>> cherry-pick into Qt 5.15) and by then all new changes in Gerrit will
>>>> be properly formatted (due to the earlier hook).
>>> 
>>> Incrementally sounds good to me.
>>> 
>>> Still I am a bit of a fence here. So far I've seen a couple of auto-
>>> formatting attempts biting back, so I thinl it would help to convince me
>>> to see the kind of changes that would happen first before deciding
>>> on the global change.
>>> 
>>> Andre'
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