Re: Editor config and code formatting

[Jaap Keuter <jaap.keuter () xs4all nl>]

Hi,

As consistent formatting not always translates into readable formatting (although in many/most cases it does) I’m not 
in favour of forced automatic formatting.
And that is where great freedom comes with great responsibility. I’m already pleased if we can have a consistent style 
_per file_

I’ve created a mockup once, of a script calling uncrustify while adapting its configuration according to the modelines 
in the file. It works well, but readability sometimes suffers.

My €0.02



> On 1 Mar 2022, at 18:45, David Perry <boolean263 () gmail com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Bottom line up front: how much do people care about the formatting of Wireshark's source code?
>
> Background: I'm looking into [#17253][1]. It's chiefly about removing editor modelines from the footer of each source 
> file in favour of just using `.editorconfig` files. But by extension it's also about removing the exceptions from 
> `.editorconfig` files and making the formatting rules consistent across files.
>
> I took a manual pass at harmonizing the formatting of the C files in the root of the repo and that was painful, so I 
> researched automatic approaches for the rest of our code. [Clang-Format][2] seems to be a popular approach for this 
> sort of thing.
>
> Automatic code formatters in general, and clang-format in particular, are rigid and somewhat naïve in how they do 
> things. This is in contrast to the flexible formatting practices we use. That's not a huge deal if we just want to 
> reformat once to harmonize our indentation levels and whatnot, and then return to manually formatting based on the 
> new standard.
>
> On the other hand, a comment on !6298 suggested that automatic reformatting could be integrated as a pre-commit hook 
> and/or a CI step. That... also isn't a huge deal, I guess. We'd have consistency across files at the price of 
> slightly less formatting freedom. (And of having another developer prerequisite to install, if we did it as a 
> pre-commit hook.)
>
> But it's a decision that should be made by the dev community as a whole. So what do you folks think? Is consistent 
> formatting important to you? Would you like to see it enforced with an automatic formatter?
>
> (My proposed `.clang-format` file is in [!6298][3] and aims to capture the most common practices used across the 
> codebase. Please use that MR for discussions about specific formatting details. This email is for the general 
> discussion of whether/how to apply and enforce formatting.)
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> David Perry
> he/him
>
> [1]: https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17253
> [2]: https://releases.llvm.org/13.0.1/tools/clang/docs/ClangFormat.html
> [3]: https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/6298
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