On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 7:03 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 09 2017, Jeff King jotted: > >> On Mon, Aug 07, 2017 at 06:25:54PM -0700, Brandon Williams wrote: >> >>> I'm sure this sort of thing comes up every so often on the list but back at >>> git-merge I mentioned how it would be nice to not have to worry about style >>> when reviewing patches as that is something mechanical and best left to a >>> machine (for the most part). I saw that 'clang-format' was brought up on the >>> list once before a couple years ago >>> (https://public-inbox.org/git/20150121220903.GA10267@xxxxxxxx/) but nothing >>> really came of it. I spent a little bit of time combing through the various >>> options and came up with this config based on the general style of our code >>> base. The big issue though is that our code base isn't consistent so try as >>> you might you wont be able to come up with a config which matches everything we >>> do (mostly due to the inconsistencies in our code base). >> >> Right, the reason I stopped pursuing it was that I couldn't find a way >> to have it make suggestions for new code without nagging about existing >> code. If we were to aggressively reformat to match the tool for existing >> code, that would help. But I'm a bit worried that there would always be >> suggestions from the tool that we don't agree with (i.e., where the >> guiding principle is "do what is readable"). 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. But I think we'd rather want to find the closest approximation to our current style first. >> I dunno. I guess "go fmt" people decided to just treat the tool's output >> as the One True Way. I haven't written enough Go to have an opinion >> myself, but it seems to at least work for them. > > (I have no opinion either way on whether this clang formatting this is a > good idea or not) I think it is actually beneficial as it is one less thing to worry about as a contributor. Maybe compare it to programming language that has garbage collection built in, which is also a feature to allow the contributor to focus on "what is important". (style is not, all it can do is hold back progress by too much nitpicking IMHO) >> What does the tooling look like these days for just adjusting lines >> touched by a given patch? $ clang-format --help USAGE: clang-format [options] [<file> ...] .. -i - Inplace edit <file>s, if specified.. -lines=<string> - <start line>:<end line> - format a range of lines (both 1-based). Multiple ranges can be formatted by specifying several -lines arguments. Can't be used with -offset and -length. Can only be used with one input file. .. I would think based on these options, a pre commit hook can be written that formats precisely the touched lines of code of each file. > > Presumably even if it sucked we could easily write a "./git-fmt-check.sh > <file>" script to do it which would do the following: > > 1. Check out the master branch > 2. Apply code formatting to entire project (or just the files you > changed) > 3. Commit that on a throwaway branch > 4. Switch back to your WIP branch > 5. See if it would merge cleanly with the throwaway code formatting > branch (I forget the actual 'not a real merge but check' command to > do this, but it exists). > > If there were any reported conflicts presumably the new code you're > adding is violating the coding standards laid out in this file. If not > you're good. This approach certainly works, but it *adds* one more step to what a contributor may need to do before sending a patch. I think the intention with a codified style is to *remove* a step (as a machine will do it for you).
