GEOS RFC 4: Code Formatting Style

This document proposes and describes desired code formatting style used across C/C++ source code in GEOS.

RFC 4:	Code Formatting Style
Author:	Mateusz Łoskot
Contact:	mateusz@…
Status:	Draft

Summary

The document proposes and describes desired default code formatting style guidelines for GEOS programming in C and C++ languages.

The goal of this document is to initiate process to reach an agreement for the default code formatting style.

Motivation

There is a need to decide on format of GEOS source code and apply such globally consistent format to GEOS C/C++ codebase.

A uniform, codebase-wide formatting style makes reading and comprehending existing code easier, writing code focused on important aspects of new developments and more pleasant, removes burden during a patch or pull request code reviews and prevents ​bikeshedding religious arguments. Even in small projects, contributing developers discover the problems of working without an agreed upon code format.

The utility of such guidelines has been proven by many open source software projects.

The scope of the proposal is specifically limited to formatting style guidelines. It is not an intention to develop a general coding guide covering other aspects of writing software like naming, etc.

Proposal

It is important to make effortless for developers to produce properly formatted code.

The proposal suggests to use ​clang-format version 3.8 or higher to define C++ code formatting rules for GEOS code.

The clang-format is a tool to automatically format C/C++ code, so that developers don't need to worry about style issues. Unlike other tools which use own parsers, clang-format uses the Clang tokenizer and supports the same C++ source code as the Clang compiler. This guarantees correct output is produced and offers unique features (eg. wrapping long lines whether of code, strings, arrays - something which AStyle has no way of doing).

The style settings are defined in .clang-format configuration file for our ​style settings.

The clang-format is straightforward to run and can support development workflow as standalone tool or as one of many editor integrations or other bespoke utilities (eg. git cl format [Chromium]).

Although no means to enforce the default formatting style are proposed, currently used CI services (eg. Travis CI) may be employed as a post-commit safety valve - a clang-format lint failure as a compile break (eg. ​clang_format.py build script used by MongoDB).

Code Formatting Rules

What code formatting rules to use?

"A mature engineers know that a standard is more important than which standard." ~[MongoDB]

clang-format offers several defaults (eg. LLVM, Mozilla, Linux, Google C++ Style).

The proposal recommends to use one of the base styles, if necessary, fine-tuning as an easier way to get started than deciding on each option one by one.

The reasons are two-fold:

• make GEOS code unified with the wide spectrum of well-established C/C++ projects
• long arguments and religious wars prevention.

.clang-format

Proposed below is complete set of settings sufficient to maintain the clean code formatting style.

NOTE: It remains open for refinements.

---
BasedOnStyle:   Mozilla
Language:       Cpp
Standard:       Cpp03
ColumnLimit:    80
IndentWidth:    4   
TabWidth:       4   
UseTab:         Never

BraceWrapping:
  AfterClass:      true
  AfterControlStatement: true
  AfterEnum:       true
  AfterFunction:   true
  AfterNamespace:  true
  AfterObjCDeclaration: true
  AfterStruct:     true
  AfterUnion:      true
  BeforeCatch:     true
  BeforeElse:      true
  IndentBraces:    false
BreakBeforeBinaryOperators: None
BreakBeforeBraces: Allman
BreakBeforeTernaryOperators: true

For brevity, the settings above are limited to the base style and points of customizations.

For actual implementation, full version of .clang-format should be generated using clang-format -dump-config option and the BasedOnStyle: Mozilla setting commented with #.

.editorconfig

​EditorConfig is currently in use and .editorconfig file is provided to automatically tell popular code editors about the basic style settings like indentation, whitespaces and end-of-line markers for distinguished types of plain text files.

The .editorconfig file will have to be updated to match the chosen .clang-format settings.

EOL

clang-format does not enforce line endings.

The EOL marker is considered to be ​a part of a file encoding decision and not part of any coding style.

The EOL marker can be enforced as project-wide setting controlled with .gitattributes and .editorconfig.

However, it shall still be left as configurable setting in developer's environment of choice (eg. git config) independently from the project-wide setting.

Big Reformat

What to do about the existing code?

The proposal recommends to just do one big reformat of the codebase.

While it may seem causing clutter in the repository log (eg. svn blame), if it occurs infrequently (eg. yearly) and is applied to the entire codebase at that time, it should not be very disruptive to the source code history.

Partial application of the code formatting rules would create more work without delivering the full benefit [MongoDB] leading to codebase with different styles mixed.

Implementation

Branches to run the big reformat in are:

• trunk
• branches/3.6
• branches/3.5
• branches/3.4

After Big Reformat

How to work against the natural entropy in a codebase:

• It is highly recommended to use clang-format integration while writing a code.
• Format changed code before committing or opening pull requests.
• If you have to commit change in code formatting, do it in separate commit. Avoid commits with a mixture of code and formatting changes.
  • There is downside of history clutter in repository, but this proposal states that a codebase with different styles across is even worse.

"After all, every moment of time wasted on code formatting or discussion thereof is eliminated." ~[MongoDB]

Implementation

Set up Travis CI "style safety valve" build dedicated to run clang-format lint based on the approach used in ​clang_format.py script by MongoDB.

References

• [MongoDB] Succeeding With ClangFormat: ​Part 1, ​Part 2, ​Part 3
• [Chromium] ​Using clang-format on Chromium C++ Code
• ​https://clangformat.com - clang-format interactive guide and builder
• ​https://zed0.co.uk/clang-format-configurator/