[LLVMdev] [cfe-dev] [bikeshed] Anyone have strong feelings about always putting `template <...>` on its own line?

[Chandler Carruth]

On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Sean Silva <silvas at purdue.edu> wrote:

> tl;dr If there are no objections I'd like to change clang-format's LLVM
> style to always put `template <...>` on its own line.
>

I would not like this change.


> I think it's a general code-layout consistency win and avoids some cases
> where trivial code changes result in significant formatting differences
> (see the last example).
>

There are innumerable other such cases. I don't know that this in and of
itself is an important goal. Personally, I favor compactness and brevity of
reading the code slightly over this. I'm sure others will have different
opinions and valuations. I'm not sure there is a significant consensus
behind this particular issue.

I would prefer that two pieces of code with similar logical structure to be
> similarly formatted, as much as reasonable, and I think that always
> breaking on template declarations is reasonable.
>

It's all in the trade offs you're willing to make. There are several things
in clang-format today that will attempt a significantly different layout of
code in order to minimize the number of lines required even though it only
works when things happen to fit within 80 columns. I think those are still
worth having because often, things fit within 80 columns! =D


> I hate to bring up such a microscopic issue, but I find myself manually
> fixing clang-format's behavior with LLVM style when it comes to putting
> `template <...>` on its own line, since TBH I feel like a reviewer would
> ask me to change it.
>

I, as a reviewer, would not ask you to change it. I can't recall i single
review where this has come up. I don't think this alone is a good
motivation.


I'll point out that while you give an extreme example in one direction,
there are extreme examples in the other direction as well:

template <int N> template <int M> struct my_trait_a : true_type {};
template <> template <> struct my_trait_a<1, 2> : false_type {};
template <> template <> struct my_trait_a<2, 3> : false_type {};
template <> template <> struct my_trait_a<3, 4> : false_type {};
template <> template <> struct my_trait_a<4, 5> : false_type {};

I don't really relish these constructs consuming 3x the number of lines.

Both of these are extreme cases, and they trade off differently. I think
for the common case neither solution is bad, and the current behavior
consumes slightly fewer lines of code. I think that's a reasonable stance
and would vote to keep it.
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