C++ style guide

Table of contents

Background

C++ code in the Carbon project should use a consistent and well documented style guide. Where possible, this should be enacted and enforced with tooling to avoid toil both for authors of C++ code in the Carbon project and for code reviewers.

However, we are not in the business of innovating significantly in the space of writing clean and maintainable C++ code, and so we work primarily to reuse existing best practices and guidelines.

Baseline

The baseline style guidance is the Google C++ style guide.

Carbon-local guidance

We provide some local guidance beyond the baseline. These are typically motived either by specific value provided to the project, or to give simpler and more strict guidance for Carbon’s narrow use of C++.

General naming rules

Carbon’s C++ code tries to match the proposed Carbon naming convention as closely as is reasonable in C++ in order to better understand and familiarize ourselves with the practice of using this convention. It happens that this is fairly similar to the naming convention in the Google style guide and largely serves to simplify it.

  • Known, compile-time constants use UpperCamelCase, referencing Proper Nouns.
    • This includes namespaces, type names, functions, member functions (except as noted below), template parameters, constexpr variables, enumerators, etc.
    • Note that virtual member functions should be named with UpperCamelCase. The distinction between a virtual function and a non-virtual function should be invisible, especially at the call site, as that is an internal implementation detail. We want to be able to freely change that without updating the name.
  • Member functions may use snake_case names if they do nothing besides return a reference to a data member (or assign a value to a data member, in the case of set_ methods), or if their behavior (including performance) would be unsurprising to a caller who assumes they are implemented that way.
  • All other names use snake_case, including function parameters, and non-constant local and member variables.
    • Private member variables should have a trailing _.

File names

  • Always use snake_case for files, directories, and build system rules. Avoid -s in these as well.
  • Use .cpp for source files, which is the most common open source extension and matches other places where “C++” is written without punctuation.

Syntax and formatting

These are minor issues where any of the options would be fine and we simply need to pick a consistent option. Where possible, clang-format should be used to enforce these.

  • Always use trailing return type syntax for functions and methods.
  • Place the pointer * adjacent to the type: TypeName* variable_name.
  • Only declare one variable at a time (declaring multiple variables requires confusing repetition of part of the type).
  • Write const before the type when at the outer level: const int N = 42;.

  • Only use line comments (with //, not /* ... */), on a line by themselves, except for argument name comments, closing namespace comments, and similar structural comments. In particular, don’t append comments about a line of code to the end of its line:

    int bad = 42;  // Don't comment here.

// Instead comment here.
int good = 42;

// Closing namespace comments are structural, and both okay and expected.
}  // namespace MyNamespace

    This dogfoods our planned commenting syntax for Carbon. It also provides a single, consistent placement rule. It also provides more resilience against automated refactorings. Those changes often make code longer, which forces ever more difficult formatting decisions, and can easily spread one line across multiple lines, leaving it impossible to know where to place the comment. Comments on their own line preceding such code, while still imprecise, are at least less confusing over the course of such refactorings.

  • Use the using-based type alias syntax instead of typedef.
  • Don’t use using to support unqualified lookup on std types; for example, using std::vector;. This also applies to other short namespaces, particularly llvm and clang.
    • Writing std:: gives clearer diagnostics and avoids any possible ambiguity, particularly for ADL.
    • An exception is made for functions like std::swap that are intentionally called using ADL. This pattern should be written as { using std::swap; swap(thing1, thing2); }.
  • For initialization:
    • Use assignment syntax (=) when initializing directly with the intended value (or with a braced initializer directly specifying that value).
    • Prefer braced initialization for aggregate initialization, such as structs, pairs, and initializer lists.
      • Use designated initializers ({.a = 1}) when possible for structs, but not for pairs or tuples. Prefer to only include the typename when required to compile (WizType{.a = 1}). This is analogous to how structs and tuples would be written in Carbon code.
      • Avoid braced initialization for types that define a constructor, except as an initializer list (llvm::SmallVector<int> v = {0, 1};), std::pair, or std::tuple. Never use it with auto (auto a = {0, 1}).
    • Prefer parenthesized initialization (FooType foo(10);) in most other cases.
    • Braced initialization without = (BarType bar{10}) should be treated as a fallback, preferred only when other constructor syntax doesn’t compile.
    • Some additional commentary is in Abseil’s tip #88, although these guidelines differ slightly.
  • Always mark constructors explicit unless there’s a specific reason to support implicit or {} initialization.

  • When passing an object’s address as an argument, use a reference unless one of the following cases applies:

    • If the parameter is optional, use a pointer and document that it may be null.

    • If it is captured and must outlive the call expression itself, use a pointer and document that it must not be null (unless it is also optional).

      • When storing an object’s address as a non-owned member, prefer storing a pointer. For example:

        class Bar {
 public:
  // `foo` must not be null.
  explicit Bar(Foo* foo) : foo_(foo) {}
 private:
  Foo* foo_;
};
  • Always use braces for conditional, switch, and loop statements, even when the body is a single statement.
    • Within a switch statement, use braces after a case label when necessary to create a scope for a variable.
    • Always break the line immediately after an open brace except for empty loop bodies.
  • For internal linkage of definitions of functions and variables, prefer static over anonymous namespaces. static minimizes the context necessary to notice the internal linkage of a definition.
    • Anonymous namespaces are still necessary for classes and enums.
    • Tests are an exception and should typically be wrapped in an anonymous namespace under the namespace of the code under test, to keep everything internal.

Copyable and movable types

  • Types should have value semantics and support both move and copy where possible.
  • Types that cannot be copied should still be movable where possible.
  • If supported, moving should be as efficient as possible.

Static and global variables

  • Global and static variables, whether at file, class, or function scope, should be declared constexpr.

Foundational libraries and data types

  • In the toolchain, prefer LLVM libraries and data structures to standard C++ ones.
    • These are optimized significantly for performance, especially when used without exception handling or safety requirements, and when used in patterns that tend to occur while building compilers.
    • They also minimize the vocabulary type friction when using actual LLVM and Clang APIs.
  • In explorer, prefer standard C++ facilities, but use LLVM facilities when there is no standard equivalent.
    • This approach is aimed to make the explorer codebase more approachable to new contributors.
    • In explorer, performance is not a high priority, and friction with LLVM and Clang APIs is much less of a concern.
  • Do not add other third-party library dependencies to any code that might conceivably be used as part of the compiler or runtime.
    • Compilers and runtime libraries have unique constraints on their licensing. For simplicity, we want all transitive dependencies of these layers to be under the LLVM license that the Carbon project as a whole uses (as well as LLVM itself).

Suggested .clang-format contents

See this repository’s .clang-format file.