Coding Style

[RaphaelPetrequin]

I know it can be pretty annoying but I think we need to create our Coding Style.
I also know that we have a clang but it can do nothing about naming convention for:

• Files
• Folders
• Class
• Class' methods
• Templates
• Namespaces
• Variables:
  • as Privates on Class
  • as Publics on Class
  • as Instanciations on a function
  • as Parameters on a function
  • naming depending of type...
• Enum
• Constants
• etc...

I don't know if I overthink but I am pretty sure we won't have the same namings, and having the same rules could help to avoid confusion.

Anyway, I think the choice must be made before we go too far.

[mbarleon]

We absolutely need this. We can even write scripts to ensure/fix coding style compliance that we can run in pre-commit and CIs

[mbarleon]

We could use an already existing coding style such as Google's. This would facilitate our work as scripts may already exist

[mbarleon]

Their problem with exceptions are that they hide the code's flow, and that they come with an overhead. Creating our own exception class would not fix this, and creating a whole exception flow is painful (you can check my library that does exactly that in C if you want to see what it would look like, but I would not recommend doing that)

[mbarleon]

I checked this coding style and I like it, the only rule i don't want to apply is:

For consistency with STL, you can use struct instead of class for stateless types, such as traits, template metafunctions, and some functors.

Out of curiosity, may I ask why?

[Kaiwinta]

It's mainly an habit, I'm only used to follow only this rule:

Use a struct only for passive objects that carry data; everything else is a class.

[RaphaelPetrequin]

I quote:

"
Google-Specific Magic
There are various tricks and utilities that we use to make C++ code more robust, and various ways we use C++ that may differ from what you see elsewhere.

cpplint
Use cpplint.py to detect style errors.

cpplint.py is a tool that reads a source file and identifies many style errors. It is not perfect, and has both false positives and false negatives, but it is still a valuable tool.

Some projects have instructions on how to run cpplint.py from their project tools. If the project you are contributing to does not, you can download cpplint.py separately.
"

So do we use this script / modify it ?

[mbarleon]

We can use it. If we want to use a wrapper for it and/or use multiple tools across the repo, I created the StyleChecker repository. This project can be used as a CLI tool (can be installed with pipx install git+https://github.com/Splinter3D/StyleCheck, and used in pre-commit)