Re: GOP-PROP 3: C++ formatting

[Trevor Daniels]

Graham Percival wrote Wednesday, June 22, 2011 12:30 AM

> Another problem is that the scripts/auxiliar/fixcc.py depends on
> emacs, but emacs’ formatting changes between versions.
>
>
> ** Eliminate tabs
>
> I’m going to make the bold step of assuming that we will eliminate
> tabs in all C++ files. I personally like the idea of tabs, but
> from an examination of source code styles (both official and
> unofficial) in various projects, I must admit that this ship has
> sailed.

+1

Tabs were useful before keyboards had auto-repeating keys, and
still are when laying out tables with fixed width columns.  But the
mixed tabs and spaces required to lay out code with varying
indentations is just a nuisance.

> Not everybody has emacs installed, and the C++ formatting varies
> between versions. That said, we could probably avoid that problem
> by giving a custom .el file with the C++ formatting from whichever
> version of emacs we prefer (23.1.1, 23.2, ...?)

Include in build dependencies?  Which version is not important, but
definitely must be fixed.

> There’s also the consideration of how much energy we want to spend
> arguing about this. My preference is just to say "screw it, let’s
> just use fixcc.py strictly". I don’t like tying the code
> formatting to a specific text editor (much less one whose
> formatting changes with different versions!), but astyle and
> uncrustify just don’t seem "there" yet.

Neither do I, but the alternative of defining *precisely* our 
specific
c++ formatting rules is too horrendous.

> ** Implementation notes
>
> No plan for how to do this yet; it will be a mess.

Fix a date for the conversion and convert all files in origin/master
on that date.  Publicise it well so developers are fully aware and
can do the same on their own branches.

Any old patches not yet applied will (possibly) break, but they
are known and can be relatively easily fixed, as you say:

> somebody applies the patch to the un-indented
> source code, then run the indentation tool, then make a new patch,

It doesn't have to be the original contributor who does this as
no code changes are involved.

Trevor