ClangFormat4J

An Eclipse plugin that integrates the clang-format tool as an alternative Java code formatter.

Description

A consistent coding style is important for a project. As I experienced huge formatter changes with every Eclipse-IDE update and the eclipse formatter has some bugs which won’t be fixed, I forked the CppStyle Eclipse Plugin to support clang-format for Java files.

You can format the Java source code by either

• Saving the file
• or Selecting the region to format or all of the java file content and then pressing Ctrl + Shift + f on Linux and other systems or Command + Shift + f on MacOS.
• or Context-Menu - > Source -> Format

Requirement

clang-format   http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormat.html

Install clang-format on Linux/MacOS

clanf-format can be built from llvm/clang source. But installing from binary is much easier.

Installation

Install from update site

TODO

Manual

• Build ClangFormat4J with maven first. mvn clean verify
• Install ClangFormat4J with local update site file:///<YOUR_CODE_PATH>/update/target/site

Restart Eclipse.

Configure ClangFormat4J

To enable ClangFormat4J(clang-format) as default Java code formatter, go to Preferences -> Java -> Code Style -> Formatter page and switch “Code Formatter” from [built-in] to “ClangFormat4J (clang-format)”

To enable ClangFormat4J(clang-format) as Java code formatter for a project, go to Project properties -> Java General -> Formatter page and switch “Code Formatter” from [built-in] to “ClangFormat4J (clang-format)”

To configure clang-format

ClangFormat4J does not support appending command line parameters to clang-format. So, use their respective configuration files to do this.

ClangFormat4J will first try the provided clang-format style path (see PreferencePage). If the path is not valid it will then pass the full absolute path of the source file to clang-format in command line. And clang-format will try to find the configuration file named .clang-format in the source file’s path, and its parent’s path recursivly.

So put the configuration file .clang-format into the project’s root direcotry can make it work for all source files in the project.

Further more, you can also add the configuration file .clang-format into Eclipse workspace root directory to make it work for all projects in the workspace.

To generate the clang-format configuration file .clang-format:

clang-format -dump-config -style=Chromium> .clang-format

If no configuration file named .clang-format is found, “-style=Chromium” will be passed to clang-format and Chromium style will be used by default.