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I have a codebase that is touched by many people. While most people make an effort to keep the code nicely formatted (e.g. consistent indentation and use of braces), some don't, and even those that do can't always do it because we all use different editors, so settings like spaces vs. tabs are different.
Is there any standard lint tool that checks that code is properly formatted, but doesn't actually change it (like indent but that returns only errors and warnings)?
While this question could be answered generally, my focus is on C and C++, because that's what this project is written in.
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Over the years, different versions of lint have been developed for many C and C++ compilers, and while modern-day compilers have lint-like functions, lint-like tools have also advanced their capabilities.
A linter will typically report violations, but it's usually up to the programmer to fix the problem, while a code formatter tends to apply its rules directly to the source code, thus correcting formatting mistakes automatically.
Linting is the automated checking of your source code for programmatic and stylistic errors. This is done by using a lint tool (otherwise known as linter). A lint tool is a basic static code analyzer. The term linting originally comes from a Unix utility for C.
Prettier can be run as a plugin for ESLint, which allows you to lint and format your code with a single command. Anything you can do to simplify your dev process is a win in my book.
Google uses cpplint. This is their style guide.
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The Linux kernel uses a tool that does exactly this - it's called checkpatch. You'd have to modify it to check your coding standards rather than theirs, but it could be a good basis to work from. (It is also designed for C code rather than C++).
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