Hi Will, On 2026-03-18T09:54:38-0700, Will Yardley wrote: > On Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 11:21:28AM +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 01:11:14AM +0100, Alejandro Colomar via Mutt-dev > > wrote: > > > Okay, so I've tried today clang-format(1) for the first time, after > > > someone suggested it in a project I co-maintain, and now have a well > > > formed opinion about it: > > > > It's pure crap. Please don't use it. > [...] > > Before I drop the proposal, though, are there any Mutt devs/contributors who > > would like to play devil's advocate? > > In more or less the same boat as Robin on this. > > I am not a C programmer, and can't speak to clang-format specifically. I > will say broadly that, since starting to use them, I have really > appreciated autoformatters generally (ruff / black for Python, prettier > for js, etc.), especially when working with a team of people. It may > well turn out that there isn't a good tool available for C, but I do > think that if it is possible to find a formatter that works and can be > enforced, there is a lot to be said for both the resulting consistency, > and kind of taking arguments / bikeshedding about code style and > formatting out of the equation. > > I'm not sure if the concerns Alejandro mentioned are about the > functionality of the program, its default configuration, or both. It > does seem like the program supports formatting based on different style > guides, and configuring certain parameters > (https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html), so maybe > some objections could be overcome by either disabling certain types of > formatting, or choosing different config settings?
The problem is the fundamental functionality of the program. It doesn't have any way to fix the problems with configuration. > Or, maybe come up with the style guide first, then work backwards from > that to see if a formatter / formatter config can be created that will > work? I don't know if there are any other formatters that would be good. And I don't think writing a formatter from scratch just for mutt(1) would be reasonable. But what is clear is that clang-format(1) is really bad. If anyone wants to work on a new formatter, or knows of another formatter that is better, I'm fine with that. Have a lovely day! Alex -- <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>
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