[Qt-creator] Qt Creator beautifier plugin vs. built-in code style

[Nikolai Kosjar]

On 08/21/2017 08:18 PM, Timur Kristóf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I noticed that the built-in code style options somewhat clash with the
> beautifier plugin. (I notice that the code style settings don't affect
> the beautifier plugin at all, and the beautifier settings are rather
> rudimentary at the moment.)
> 
> What are the long-term plans in this regard?
> 
> Do you guys intend to improve the built-in code styling, or do you want
> to eventually replace it with either the beautifier or something based
> on clang-format?
Evaluation is on-going :)

I'm playing around with clang-format for the Qt Creator code base to see 
whether it can replace our built-in code style use cases and how well it 
can handle our code style/formatting.

Some general observations:

1. Qt Creator has a built-in *indenter*, handling/controlling whitespace 
before the first token of a line.

2. clang-format does this and more:
  * it handles/controls whitespace everywhere, also taking a maximum 
column count into account
  * it can e.g. also sort your includes and add comments at the closing 
curly brace of namespaces: "} // namespace X".

3. The beautifier-plugin for clang-format allows to format the entire 
file or text selections of it. Changed lines are properly indicated by 
red vertical stripes in the left editor margin, which is cool. The 
plugin does not yet make use of the -cursor argument, which allows to 
format the AST at cursor position and probably would be useful/needed to 
replace current on-enter-indendation.

Nikolai