Inconsistent Java formatters

[olcbean]

Having incomplete formatting rules makes PR review process difficult.

In CONTRIBUTING only two changes are mentioned, and The rest is left to Java coding standards. Unfortunately there are differences between Eclipse and IntelliJ defaults. Moreover there are 3 build-in profiles in Eclipse : all slightly different.

Here are a few examples :

• Indentation for wrapped line :
  in Eclipse all three build-in profiles set it to 2
  in IntelliJ it is set to 1 ( Use non deprecated xcontenthelper #28503 (comment) )
• Eclipse : Maximum width of comments is 80 ( although most of the comments are using 140 )
• Eclipse : White spaces in Arrays initializers is different for the different Eclipse build-in profiles ( "after opening brace" and "before closing brace" ) : new int[]{1, 2, 3}; vs new int[]{ 1, 2, 3 };

[jasontedor]

This is okay, we will accept this for now until someday we implement automatic code-formatting on commit. I would prefer to close this issue since it is not actionable at this time.

[nik9000]

I think it'd be more correct to say "do whatever you and the reviewing agree reads the best" which isn't really a great state of events. But we aren't unique in having this problem. Having more standards would make PRs easier but they are hard because:

1. There are lots of times when you want to break the standards and we need to account for that.
2. We have a ton of code that wouldn't comply with the standard and it is difficult with tools like checkstyle don't support properly ratcheting down failures. Look at how many of our files still have lines longer than 140 characters. Cleaning those up is fairly time consuming.

[olcbean]

What I had in mind here was not to suggest 'enforcement' ( as it would be rather challenging at this stage and AFAICS no obvious benefits ). But rather introducing a simple formatter that should be used for new code to avoid unnecessary reformatting. Basically instead of

• Java indent is 4 spaces
• Line width is 140 characters
• The rest is left to Java coding standards

share a simple eclipse formatter ( which AFAIK can also be imported in IntelliJ )