[LLVMdev] lld coding style

[Chandler Carruth]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org>
wrote:

> On 5 October 2014 07:19, Saleem Abdulrasool <compnerd at compnerd.org> wrote:
> > So with that in mind, I would like to ask, would it be possible to
> consider
> > switching to LLVM style for lld?
>
> We don't usually enforce code styles on side projects because it
> doesn't make sense to do so.


This is not completely accurate. Both LLD and LLDB were given specific
exemptions from the coding standards, but Clang wasn't and I wouldn't
expect a new subproject to *necessarily* get such an exemption. It might,
it might not.

I consider the current state with both LLD and LLDB a bug rather than a
feature because it creates pointless and non-trivial disruption for
developers to move between LLVM, Clang, LLD, and LLDB. You can argue that
coding standards are like fashion, but *changing* coding standards is a
much more pragmatic and real concern. At least one important point of
LLVM's standards (in my mind and I suspect other developers' minds) is to
drive consistency both within projects and across projects.


> Code style changes with time. If the majority of lld developers agree
> with you that the current style is bad and needs to be changed (to a
> more LLVM-ish style),


Figuring out whether most LLD devs want to switch seems like the point of
the email?


> than future commits should move lld's style
> towards that. Not by adding new styles to one line inside an old
> function, but by deprecating style when you deprecate code, and
> creating style when you create code.
>

That is one option. But the developers of LLD may be willing to more
aggressively convert. We should let them speak for themselves rather than
hypothesizing here.


>
> It's also very likely that, by the time you have converted all old
> code with new style, the preferred style will have changed, and you'll
> want to do it all over again. To avoid that pointless race against
> nothing, we tend to keep the style that was in the original
> file/function and not mind much.
>

This has not been my experience in any part of the LLVM project. The coding
standards are extremely stable these days.
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