Re: automated coding style tool

Tom Tromey
2025-01-18T18:57:10Z

>>>>> "Luis" == Luis Machado <luis.machado@arm.com> writes:

>> I'm in favor of using a tool but my view is that it has to meet some
>> minimal standard of usefulness. I just think clang-format does not do
>> this.

Luis> That's fair. But are we factoring in the amount of time spent over the years
Luis> telling contributors "you forgot a space here", "two spaces after period"?

Yes, of course I did.

I review a lot of patches. My feeling is that formatting is
occasionally an issue, particularly with newcomers, but not really a big
part of review. Bad formatting can be a signal that a patch requires
more attention, because experienced developers try to make their changes
conform to the style of the surrounding code -- so discrepancies mean
you may be dealing with someone who isn't so adept.

On the other hand, I also read a lot of code. And, my view overall is
that readability is far more important than ease of formatting. And,
furthermore, I dislike some aspects of clang-format's output, on
readability grounds.

Luis> Some stuff is a bit different and some other stuff is very different. But
Luis> personally I'm willing to see this automation go through and I'm fine
Luis> adapting to a potentially new format, whatever that is.

Me too, but within some bounds.

Luis> I might've mentioned this already, but for folks that deal with
Luis> multiple projects,

FWIW I also deal with multiple projects.

Tom