[GNUnet-developers] clang formatting discussion

[Christian Grothoff]

From private discussion with Martin where I pointed out a few style
issues I didn't like and Martin either created fixes or determined that
what I wanted was not (yet) possible...
(forwarding with permission)...

On 4/17/19 3:58 PM, Schanzenbach, Martin wrote:
> The thing is clang-format is built with the most common styles in
> mind (including GNU). It does not cover every little corner case and
> does not want to in order to keep it simple (see
> https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html#adding-additional-style-options).

Yes, I did read that in the manual as well. Still, in the "worst case"
we could consider patching it ourselves, but it would have to be a
reasonably painful issue to justify that.

> So either we move towards a tool-based solution (idk any other good
> besides clang-format) and sacrifice such little issues like odd
> formatting in the case of yoda expressions or just leave it as is.
Well, the list of sacrifices (= styles generated by the tool that I
personally don't like) is still a bit long. Regardless, I should start
by saying that I appreciate your efforts at making it shorter, and I am
still optimistic that this can be fixed. In the past we tried to get
there with GNU indent (even patching it!), but ultimately it didn't
quite work out. My feeling is that GNU indent didn't work in part
because it ultimately required installing indent with our patches, and
also in part because it didn't integrate with editors nicely.

On that last point:

There is still a few things we need to figure out (others on
gnunet-developers might weigh in here). First of all, how compatible is
this actually going to be with editing in Emacs and other editors?

Sure, running an external tool afterwards is always possible, but does
this integrate with Emacs to the point that the formatting is
applied/conveniently apply-able during editing? (Say what I do right
now: press Tab and have the indentation match what clang will do? Or can
we adjust the existing Emacs style (and other editors!) to match 100%
what clang formatter generates?)

Naturally, some of the style issues that remain (like the impossibility
to force a break after function arguments even if the line is short even
without one) may feed into this.

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