> On Nov 7, 2026, at 20:25, Maciej Stachowiak <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> On Nov 7, 2026, at 4:36 AM, Ryosuke Niwa via webkit-dev
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 6, 2026, at 00:05, Geoff Garen via webkit-dev
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I think this debate would be easier to resolve if it moved from
>>> abstractions like “C++ style” and “Swift style” to specific style rules.
>>>
>>> Would someone who prefers “Swift style” be willing to list some specific
>>> deviations from WebKit’s C++ style guidelines, why they prefer those
>>> deviations, and why that preference should outweigh concerns about
>>> consistency?
>>>
>>> One deviation I heard was “no un-required semicolons”. First, I agree with
>>> that proposal. Second, as stated it may not technically be a deviation from
>>> WebKit’s C++ style guidelines — C++ just happens to require semicolons in
>>> more places.
>>
>> Right, but nothing in our coding style guideline says about semicolon so
>> that's consistent with the proposal to use the same coding style guideline.
>
> To the best of my understanding of the JSON style rules that Richard linked,
> quite a few of the rules there are not covered at all in the C++ guidelines
> and logically would not be because they pertain to Swift constructs that
> aren’t in C++.
>
> Since it;s hard to compare prose rules with rules implemented in code, maybe
> we could look at some real Swift code linted (and/or hand written) to follow
> the de facto Swift style rules.
Right, it's probably useful to talk about concrete style differences.
> What if any deviations do you see from WebKit’s coding style for C++? The
> only difference that standards out to be is the opening curly brace for
> functions being on the same line as the declaration instead of its own line.
> But that seems to genuinely pervasive Swift convention, and everything else
> about the function declaration syntax is different too, so it doesn’t seem
> like a huge win to go separate brace.
I don't think we should be changing the style just because other Swift code
places { on the same line as the declaration. Plenty of C/C++ codebase does
that too but we have our own style.
> https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebKit/UIProcess/WebBackForwardList.swift
>
> Here’s some code that may have been written without the guidelines as closely
> in mind. It looks basically the same except that function declarations with
> multiple parameters are written with a line per parameter.
I don't think we should put each argument on its own line. I find this style
extremely verbose. Blink code often does that and makes the code much harder to
follow.
I'm really not interested in re-litigating all these syntactical approaches.
These things have been discussed in webkit-dev over the years. If we're
changing our coding guideline, then it should be applied to both C++ and Swift
where applicable and should be a discussion of its own.
If we're serious about adopting Swift in more parts of WebKit, then its coding
guideline should be something we all agree upon, not something a person who
wrote Swift code before others dictate.
- R. Niwa_______________________________________________
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