Replace astyle

[matthiasbeyer]

Astyle behaves/is very bad:

• Adds blank lines at EOF
• Isn't forward compatible (see Add tests astyle #68 )
• Doesn't allow simple checking

It should be replaced.

Alternatives I know (by name) are:

• gnu indent
• uncrustify (maybe an C++ thing, I don't know)
• Vera++ (maybe also an C++ thing)
• cb which is an ancient beautifier (code beautifier) but may match our needs
• nsiqcppstyle
• KWStyle (from the cmake guys)

We should discuss the alternatives here.

[matthiasbeyer]

@neithernut you're welcome to review my (kind of) suggestions and replace astyle with it after we chose one.

[TheNeikos]

A blank line at EOF is good. It keeps Git happy. Although, I don't know the extent, so if it adds multiple (or one everytime it is run) then it has to go.

[neithernut]

Piping through astyle yields one additional newline per run.

[matthiasbeyer]

That sucks, indeed!

[matthiasbeyer]

I guess KWStyle sounds good, but well, I don't know the details (of either of the listed suggestions). So @neithernut should evaluate and tell us what is the best idea for the project (and eventually for other projects as well...)

[neithernut]

I'm on it

[neithernut]

gnu indent and uncrustify are availible in package repos and somewhat similar to astyle, so the config file may be more easily ported from the astylerc. They, too, do not support style checking. However, we already have a workaround.
Uncrustify's default config contains a hint about it's version, so it may be forward-compatible in some way. Someone would have to test this.

KWStyle looks good. Also, it's XML all over the place.

Vera++ and nsiqcppstyle are out since they seem to be cpp only.

for cb I didn't find anything useful (try googleing for "cb"...)

[matthiasbeyer]

uncrustify looks like a C++ thing to me, too. Maybe we (you?) should try gnu indent first... if you want.

[neithernut]

I'm on the train in a few minutes, so I probably can't do it until tomorow.

[matthiasbeyer]

I don't care about this one as much as about others. it is in the 'v0.0.1' milestone, which is due end of the month. I consider this is secondary and not as important as the actual code. I would love to see more code instead of this.

[neithernut]

@TheNeikos @manuelmessner: evaluating the alternatives mentioned in this discussion (gnu indent and uncrustify and maybe KWStyle) would be a possibility to contribute which does not require deep knowledge about any internas.