[RFC] Semi-Automatic clang-format of files with low frequency

All

A couple of months ago I added the following page documentation Clang-Formatted-Status to track the status of “How Much” clang-formatted the LLVM/Clang project is.

I’m a contributor to clang-format and would like to see LLVM 100% clang formatted so we can use LLVM as a massive test-suite for clang-format when we make changes.

In the last couple of months since we added this page the % has gone up by ~4% and this is likely in most part of either: a mention in LLVM-Weekly, the premerge checks or perhaps some recent clang-format efforts by individuals. This is fantastic and every directory that gets to 100% increase the directories that I can run against to check against.

However, it recently twigged to me that files that don’t change very often are never going to be 100% clang-formatted simply by virtue of clang-formatting all new changes.

So I 100% understand this kind of topic comes up from time to time and I understand that we don’t want to automatically clang-format the entire tree as this can disrupt peoples downstream forks, especially where they actively have code inflight.

But I wonder if we could have a general rule that said a [NFC] clang-format change could be made on ANY file that had NOT been changed in a 6/12 months period? I believe this process could be automated at least in a semi-automatic way. Once complete the pre-merge checks should maintain the current status.

This would drive the goal of completely clang-formatted source tree, without the disruption to current active areas.

Any thoughts?

MyDeveloperDay

I think this is the kind of thing to discuss on the llvm-dev@ mailing-list for now, this is still the place for such RFCs at the moment I believe.