[LLVMdev] lld coding style (original) (raw)

Renato Golin renato.golin at linaro.org
Sun Oct 5 09:37:49 PDT 2014

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. There are too many conflicts between developers, external source code, style-oriented commits that break the time-line of the project, that it's just not worth worrying about it. Not to mention that style is fashion, some like it this way, some like it that way.

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), 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.

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.

Code style is like keyboard layout. Your first reaction is "what the f**?", then you get used to it, than you can switch between all keyboard styles (except AZERTY) without a problem.

cheers, --renato

More information about the llvm-dev mailing list