Vscode-cpptools: Feature request: Path to clang-format file

[KaeLL]

Give us the option to specify the path to the clang-format file on our settings.json. Code bases usually keep one in order to standardize coding style, but would be amazing if I could format the files with my own .clang-format file without touching the file from the code base.
As an extension of this, an option to choose which .clang-format file to use would be most needed when selecting Format Document in the Show All Commands list. Something like:

Format Document (User defined)
Format Document (Standard)

Where Standard would use the standard .clang-format searching and fallback rules, and User defined is the file defined in the settings file.

[sean-mcmanus]

The current workaround is to set the C_Cpp.clang_format_style (to an inline { ... } format and not a file path). Is there a reason that isn't sufficient?

[KaeLL]

I don't know. Maybe because I intend on overriding a lot of rules, making inline overriding silly; cluttering the settings file with the whole clang-format stuff is also silly; and because, like you said, it's a workaround.

[fdwr]

@KaeLL : Agreed. For comparison with other similar plugins, the Uncrustify plugin has this option to set your uncrustify.cfg file path (uncrustify.configPath).

[KennFatt]

Sorry for dumping, but there is any workaround for this idea?

[sean-mcmanus]

@KennFatt Did you see https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/issues/3675#issuecomment-494549010 ?

[AdamEr8]

Hi, I was looking for this as well, and would like to try my hand at adding it myself :)
any relevant guidance that could help me other than what appears in CONTRIBUTING.md?

anyway, will try to get it done and simply open a PR...

[sean-mcmanus]

@AdamEr8 master branch might be broken without our updated binaries from our pending 0.29.0-insiders2, but you could base it off release. I'm not 100% sure how this would be implemented...I guess converting the .clang-format file to a clang_format_style?. FYI, we send clang_format_* settings to our closed source cpptools process, so ideally your PR wouldn't require any cpptools process changes.

[AdamEr8]

I'm not 100% sure how this would be implemented...I guess converting the .clang-format file to a clang_format_style?

Yes, I've been wondering about it as well.
It's either converting to clang_format_style, or could be to back-up any .clang-format in the running dir, copy the custom file, apply clang-format, and restore to old state, but I think it's obvious using the dedicated cmd arg is cleaner and safer.

one problem with converting to clang_format_style, is that it doesn't have any notion of "sections" for different languages like a .clang-format has.
So should I take the global/common section + Cpp section, and ignore the rest?
(does the C/C++ Extension only apply clang-formatting to C/C++ files..?)

[sean-mcmanus]

The cpptools process gets VS Code format requests from VS Code via the LSP (https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/specification#textDocument_formatting), which is registered to handle C/C++ at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/blob/release/Extension/src/LanguageServer/client.ts#L1202 , so we don't format other languages, and having a non-Cpp "Language: " section in a .clang-format file will generate an error, so just using the global+Cpp sections seems good.

[AdamEr8]

Thanks for the detailed explanation! much appreciated.