Formatting in VSCode

[aaron-hutton]

For anyone that develops F' projects using VSCode, have you managed to get around the PRIVATE #define formatting problem when using F'?

VSCode doesn't understand that PRIVATE used in the header files refers to the private keyword which then breaks the indentation and makes the file look very messy. Obviously, this is calculated at compile-time, so I don't know if it would be possible to fix, but I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has any suggestions.

[Joshua-Anderson]

No, this has been a frustrating problem! Since clang-format uses clang's parser it doesn't offer the ability to supply custom #define options like can be done with doxygen.

The workaround that's currently being considered is manually replacing PRIVATE before running clang-format, then swapping it back after formatting. Ex: sed 's;PRIVATE:;private: // clang-format;' | clang-format | sed 's;private: // clang-format;PRIVATE:;'

Long term F' may shift away from using PRIVATE for whitebox testing to using friend classes instead, but it's a nontrivial migration.

[aaron-hutton]

Thanks, as horrible as that is it will work for now. For anyone looking to integrate this into the actual C++ formatting (such as format on save) the steps I took were:

1. Create a file with the contents:

#! /bin/bash
sed -r 's;PRIVATE\s*:;private: // clang-format;' | clang-format "$@" | sed 's;private: // clang-format;PRIVATE:;'

I added optional whitespace before the : because a previous formatted has obviously been adding it. I'm also passing the args from VSCode to clang-format so changes to other VSCode settings still apply.

2. Give the file executable permissions.
3. Change the Clang_format_path VSCode setting to point to the file.

[EbenezerA99]

Hi Everyone,

Resurrecting an old thread here: Does the fprime team have any suggestions for how to approach formatting for an fprime project? Do the fprime developers use a .clang-format file? Can this be shared with the community?

Is the approach described above used by the team to address the PRIVATE #define formatting problem?

[EbenezerA99]

thanks for that update! I tried to specify my own clang-format file, but it seems like the '--pass-through` argument does not work ...

I was trying this: fprime-util format -f test.cpp -x --pass-through -style=file:../.clang-format.

The error message is: [ERROR] No .clang-format file found in /home/visors/fprime-devel/visors-software/fprime. Override location with --pass-through --style=file:<path>.

[LeStarch]

@thomas-bc, thoughts on this one?

[thomas-bc]

@EbenezerA99 have you tried passing through the --style[...] flag? Notice the double dash, where you have a single one. I have not had issues overriding the style file.

[EbenezerA99]

Oops thats my bad. I tried it with the double dash and it still doesn't work - I continue to get the same error message. However, shouldn't I have originally gotten an error that -style was not an approved flag?

I had a hunch that I didn't see that error because fprime-util format requires the .clang-format file to exist in the fprime folder(I don't currently have that because I'm working off of the master branch).

I added an empty .clang-format file to the fprime folder and I got a new error message:

Any thoughts?

[thomas-bc]

Huh, now that's interesting... what platform are you on and which version of clang-format are you using?
--pass-through is only passing through the flags to the underlying executable, it won't validate them.
What happens when you passthrough a --style option is that the command that gets executed has two --style flags, one with the F' .clang-format and one with the one you're specifying. This works as expected on my machine (using only the second --style), but if it doesn't for yours, you may want to file an issue and we'll look into it.