Better method for managing clang-format binaries

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#673 14 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
java
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start with lib/src/main/java/com/diffplug/spotless/cpp/ClangFormatStep.java at the linked lines, and read the existing system-path lookup, version check, and error handling. Review the issue discussion for an agreed direction; done should mean a clearer way to handle missing or mismatched clang-format binaries, or instructions that let users resolve those cases.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement

We are able to call clang-format by shelling out to it on the system path, and we are able to cache its results by enforcing a version check on the binary. However, if it isn't on the path, or the version is wrong, we just show a helpful error message and let the user figure it out from there:

https://github.com/diffplug/spotless/blob/608e128381c89260f8a38fba985415c1f962ec7b/lib/src/main/java/com/diffplug/spotless/cpp/ClangFormatStep.java#L70-L83

It would be nice if we could handle this better, or at least have better instructions.

Dominant language
Java
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Forks
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Avg merge
1d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
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