run-clang-format.py

Lint files and directories with clang-format

• Introduction
• How to use?
• Continuous integration
• FAQ
  • Can I check only changed files?

Introduction

A wrapper script around clang-format, suitable for linting multiple files and to use for continuous integration.

This is an alternative API for the clang-format command line. It runs over multiple files and directories in parallel. A diff output is produced and a sensible exit code is returned.

How to use?

Copy run-clang-format.py in your project, then run it recursively on directories, or specific files:

./run-clang-format.py -r src include foo.cpp

It's possible to exclude paths from the recursive search:

./run-clang-format.py -r \
    --exclude src/third_party \
    --exclude '*_test.cpp' \
    src include foo.cpp

These exclude rules can be put in a .clang-format-ignore file, which also supports comments.

An example configuration is available in this repo:

$ cat .clang-format-ignore
# ignore third_party code from clang-format checks
src/third_party/*

Continuous integration

Check .travis.yml.

For an example of failure in logs, click the badge (build is broken on purpose):

FAQ

Can I check only changed files?

No, and this is what this repository was initially about. However, once working around a few shortcommings of git clang-format, I opted to try an alternative strategy which expects the whole project to be correctly formatted.

It would make sense to support this feature as well, so that the coding style does not need to be enforced but merely suggested.