RE: Xen Coding style and clang-format

[Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2020, Artem Mygaiev wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julien Grall <julien@xxxxxxx> 
> Sent: пятница, 16 октября 2020 г. 13:24
> To: Anastasiia Lukianenko <Anastasiia_Lukianenko@xxxxxxxx>; 
> jbeulich@xxxxxxxx; George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: Artem Mygaiev <Artem_Mygaiev@xxxxxxxx>; vicooodin@xxxxxxxxx; 
> xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; committers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; 
> viktor.mitin.19@xxxxxxxxx; Volodymyr Babchuk <Volodymyr_Babchuk@xxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Xen Coding style and clang-format
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 16/10/2020 10:42, Anastasiia Lukianenko wrote:
> > > Thanks for your advices, which helped me improve the checker. I
> > > understand that there are still some disagreements about the
> > > formatting, but as I said before, the checker cannot be very flexible
> > > and take into account all the author's ideas.
> >
> > I am not sure what you refer by "author's ideas" here. The checker 
> > should follow a coding style (Xen or a modified version):
> >     - Anything not following the coding style should be considered as 
> > invalid.
> >     - Anything not written in the coding style should be left 
> > untouched/uncommented by the checker.
> >
> 
> Agree
> 
> > > I suggest using the
> > > checker not as a mandatory check, but as an indication to the author of
> > > possible formatting errors that he can correct or ignore.
> >
> > I can understand that short term we would want to make it optional so 
> > either the coding style or the checker can be tuned. But I don't think 
> > this is an ideal situation to be in long term.
> >
> > The goal of the checker is to automatically verify the coding style and 
> > get it consistent across Xen. If we make it optional or it is 
> > "unreliable", then we lose the two benefits and possibly increase the 
> > contributor frustration as the checker would say A but we need B.
> >
> > Therefore, we need to make sure the checker and the coding style match. 
> > I don't have any opinions on the approach to achieve that.
> 
> Of the list of remaining issues from Anastasiia, looks like only items 5
> and 6 are conform to official Xen coding style. As for remainning ones,
> I would like to suggest disabling those that are controversial (items 1,
> 2, 4, 8, 9, 10). Maybe we want to have further discussion on refining 
> coding style, we can use these as starting point. If we are open to
> extending style now, I would suggest to add rules that seem to be
> meaningful (items 3, 7) and keep them in checker.

Good approach. Yes, I would like to keep 3, 7 in the checker.

I would also keep 8 and add a small note to the coding style to say that
comments should be aligned where possible.